Brother to Dragons
by coconutjelly596
Summary: There is a girl at King's Cross, who has red hair and eyes that burn. She upsets everything Draco Malfoy has learned about what is right and proper, and over the years, makes him question his most basic values. Companion piece to One Kiss From You.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Harry Potter or his world. I just play with them sometimes, but I always put them back where I found them.

**A/N:** This is a new fic I'm working on. I'm not quite sure how it'll go, but I fully expect it to be both a lot steamier and a lot darker than One Kiss From You.

**This is a companion piece to One Kiss From You, a H/Hr fic. Please start there, as I will be posting the stories chronologically, not necessarily one at a time!**

Also, please add an Author Alert for me, so that you can know when either story is updated!

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_I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls. Job 30:29_

Draco Malfoy had a habit of assuming himself superior to all others. His life experience had shown him that this was the correct assumption, as every day of his first eleven years had been filled with the doting of his mother. At social events, he had observed the snide comments of his ice-cold father and the delicate wrinkle of the nose his mother had perfected throughout her life at the top of the wizarding world. From their position at the top, it was only too easy for the affluent Malfoys to look down upon everyone in their path.

Before Draco's birth, his family had had good reason to drape themselves in superiority like an expensive cloak; as a member of the Dark Lord's inner circle, Lucius Malfoy commanded an unspoken sense of terror to those around him. In the years of the Dark Lord's rise to power, the most powerful Death Eaters grew brave and began to flaunt their dark connections, though it was still considered a social faux pas to openly acknowledge a fellow witch or wizard as a Death Eater. This implicit power fueled the Malfoys' quick rise through the ranks of wizarding society, so that by the time their only son was born, what had been an old, established, yet only moderately wealthy family had become one of the most powerful in the world. Though he could never claim to be the wizard that his master was, Lucius Malfoy had more social capital than the Dark Lord could ever dream, and it was for this reason, coupled with his lust for gold and power, that he had been chosen as a member of the inner circle.

In his first ten years, the Dark Lord rose quickly to power, and the Malfoys rode that wave along with him. When their son was born, Lucius and Narcissa quickly shared the news with their lord and master, immediately pledging that he would one day bring great honor and power to the Dark Lord's new world order. He was given the name Draco, Latin for "great serpent," in honor of his inherited sovereign, and from the moment of his birth, no child had ever been so pampered as Draco Malfoy.

Nor had any child been so instilled with hate.

Before he had learned to talk, Draco had listened daily to his parents as they recalled their day to one another, heeding with interest the malicious descriptions of the Muggles, Mudbloods and blood traitors they ran across in their daily lives. As his magic began to surface in the form of levitating rattles and transforming vegetables, Lucius and Narcissa discussed the possibility of sending Draco to Bulgaria to attend Durmstrang under the watchful eye of Karkarov. He was an old family friend—another benefit of Lucius' Death Eater connections—where he would be able to receive a proper education in Dark magic during his formative years as a student. It would certainly be an improvement over the Muggle-loving Dumbledore who had had the run of Hogwarts for decades, they reasoned. The old man showed no signs of looming death, and had not been nearly as cooperative as other well-placed wizards in the wizarding world had to Lucius' attempts at bribery. He had also proven irritatingly resistant to assassination over the years, as multiple reported attempts had failed. Lucius had never personally placed a price on the old man's head, but had heard from others that assassins would sometimes return insane, driven mad by the power wielded by the ancient wizard. Sometimes, they just didn't return.

Draco was barely a year old when the end of the Dark Lord's reign finally came, and it was so sudden and without warning that Lucius had had to cling to his fortune, tooth and nail. The only way he was able to protect his personal wealth, power, and his family's good name was to openly denounce the Dark Lord, claiming bewitchment, torture, and total innocence. Though he had been as open as was safe at the time about his affiliations, there was little solid proof of his dark treachery, and those who were willing to produce such evidence to the Ministry of Magic were easily silenced.

Ironically, it was Lucius Malfoy's eagerness to forsake the Dark Lord in the wake of his downfall that preserved the power he had so tirelessly built for the Malfoy name. Any man who would so fearlessly cross the Dark Lord was a truly unscrupulous man indeed, and one who would likely go to any lengths to further his own ends. Draco's father remained a powerful influence in the wizarding world, whispering into the ear of the Minister herself, and yet his social capital withered by the week as word spread of his traitorous nature. Though he spoke otherwise among former Death Eaters with whom he was still in contact, Lucius Malfoy never expected the Dark Lord to rise back to power, and so he spent little energy in protecting the social connections that had made him so valuable a Death Eater in the first place, and none at all in combing the depths of society for the blackmailable tidbits which had been so crucial in protecting the Dark Lord in his weaker early days. He spent his time in the upper classes, gathering information that would be more personally useful.

Once it became clear that the Dark Lord was indeed gone from the world, the weight that had been lain across the shoulders of the Malfoy family was removed; Draco's future was safe from service to the Dark Lord, and their fortune—already enormous before their allegiance to the dark side of the war—had grown to heights unimagined even by the ambitious Lucius Malfoy. Best of all, the shadow under which they had lived for so many years had vanished, leaving the young family feeling blissfully safe and blessed.

This did not, of course, change the social superiority they carried like a fine mink stole. If anything, it gave the Malfoy couple a newfound feeling of power. After all, if a family could rise to power on the cresting wave of the Dark Lord himself, and leap from the precipice before the crash against the shore, who could ever stand up to that family, or to the man who led it? The Malfoys themselves were not the only ones who took this view; other Purebloods began to look to them as their leaders, even those who had not been followers of the Dark Lord. One by one, officials of the Ministry of Magic found themselves dining with the Malfoys, found their personal causes backed by the wealth and power of the Malfoy name. And, one by one, those officials found themselves under the thumb of Lucius Malfoy.

The day that Draco's letter from Hogwarts arrived, Lucius had come home from a meeting with a nobody, a bumbling idiot in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes who was well-placed to become Lucius' favored candidate for the Minister of Magic. Dumbledore had, of course, been the public darling for the position, but had thankfully refused the position in favor of staying holed up in his castle. Lucius knew that Bartemius Crouch, Sr.—the next candidate to have been put forth—would hardly be a boon to the Malfoy family once placed in office, given his voracious hunt of all known Death Eaters. He had already shown an uncomfortable amount of interest in Lucius' business ventures, though he had thankfully never had the clout to fully support his suspicions. No, to have a man like that placed in the highest official position of power in the wizarding world would surely spell trouble for a man with such a dark and twisted path. Too many donations, too many favors, too many lies could be investigated with Barty Crouch in charge.

Many of Crouch's supporters harkened to his willingness to lock up even his own son for the practice of evil magic. They saw this as a sign that he would not allow himself to be corrupted by the power he wielded, even by his own family. Lucius Malfoy knew all too well how a single truth could be twisted in many different directions, and he had made sure that everyone remembered how heartlessly Crouch had condemned his own son. As a father, it had been almost too easy for Lucius to head a covert campaign against the older Crouch, questioning how ruthlessly Crouch might have controlled the Ministry, should anyone have given him a reason to doubt their loyalties. Indeed, he reasoned, directly into the ear of Rita Skeeter, would he resist in sending anyone to Azkaban? And would he stop at the traditional offenses to earn any witch or wizard a stay in the dreaded prison? Could, perhaps, speaking out against him once he was seated behind the Minister's desk be considered an offense worth such a severe punishment?

Enough public doubt was raised against Bartemius Crouch that he was not likely to be chosen as the next Minister of Magic, but Lucius had had to act quickly to find a suitable replacement, and had found his ideal candidate in the personage of one Cornelius Fudge. Fudge was favored among many of the wealthier Pureblood families as a man who was both fascinated and intimidated by the influence they possessed in the wizarding world. This was a potent combination, as any former Death Eater well knew, and if Fudge were selected for the position, an unspoken agreement had developed among the old Pureblood families that Lucius Malfoy would speak with him on their behalf in all matters political. His family had the most social weight, and the most effective financial position to make Fudge feel as though he constantly owed the Malfoys for their assistance. Yes, Lucius was confident that he would be a willing ear to the opinions and positions of the Malfoy family, so long as he had it worth the man's while to do so.

Knowing that this was a solution most easily solved with coin—of which he had plenty—the senior Malfoy strode through the door of his mansion, wearing his victorious sneer, which widened almost imperceptibly into his prideful sneer at the sight of the yellowed parchment in his son's hands, the vivid Slytherin-green ink and violet wax seal readily visible. Out of respect for his father, Draco and Narcissa had elected to wait for his return before opening the letter. That night, Dobby the House Elf had prepared an extravagant feast for the small family, preparing—on Narcissa's orders—a dozen times more food than could ever be eaten by the three Malfoys.

The summer before Draco started at Hogwarts saw him riding a brand-new Comet 260 broomstick, an unbroken black stallion, and spending copious amounts of his mother's allowance money on dress robes and suits he would not be able to wear to Hogwarts. At ten years old, Draco Malfoy felt himself on the top of the world, and his parents wildly encouraged that assumption.

He had learnt all his life at his father's knee that there were certain families, even among the Purebloods, with whom one simply did not socialize. He now learned about their children. Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle had been in and out of the Malfoy Manor throughout Draco's childhood, and he knew them to be large, mean, and intellectually stunted. His father told him of the assets to be gained by having such followers, and gave him all of the names in information he would need to compose himself as the leader of the Slytherin first years. As the years went on, his father told him, this careful positioning would give him the power of Prefect and Head Boy, experience that would carry on well into his adult life.

Though he was only a child, Draco hungered for the day he would please his father, and more regularly earn the loving sneer he often showed Narcissa, or perhaps even that rarest of smiles he had seen in their wedding photo once when he was young. Lucius Malfoy had learned long ago that emotion was a dangerous weapon in the hands of one's enemies, and believed himself to be utterly cold and unreadable. To most he encountered, this was true, but even he was not aware that his wife and son knew the difference in his expressions, knew when he was pleased with them and when he was not. If he had known this, he would have flown into a rage, and it would not have been the first time he had hexed or cursed his own son for making him look a fool. It was Lucius' firm belief that the true punishment of a wizard's child should be magic, and excelled at small tortures in his everyday life.

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The morning Draco left for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, his mother hugged him tearfully, straightening his coat over and over, and picking at lint that was not there. Lucius scolded his wife for openly showing such attachment, reminding her that it was a sign of weakness, one a _true_ Malfoy should never show. Though they were in the front room of their grand estate where no one could see their private family moments, Narcissa moved away from Draco's side, and nodding apologetically to her husband, straightened her shoulders into her usual proud posture.

There was a small extension of the Floo network that operated in an abandoned section of the underground station directly beneath King's Cross. It was run by a man who maneuvered mostly outside the law, and was therefore only accessible to those willing and able to pay the exorbitant fees he charged. Much to Draco's chagrin, this was how the Malfoy family arrived. He would have preferred to arrive at the train on his new broomstick—he had thrown a tantrum when he learned that his father would not help him sneak a broomstick into Hogwarts—and shock his new classmates with his prowess at both flight and magic. Walking up the stairs from the filthy underground and having to push his trunk on a wheeled cart through the Muggle-crowded train station felt so beneath him as to be a silent humiliation. It seemed to force his obviously superior family onto the same level as every other piece of Muggle trash floating through the world.

His parents did not bother to acknowledge anyone around them, the unspoken reason being simply that they were all beneath the Malfoy family. They walked three astride, with Lucius in the middle and half a pace ahead, to show his position of power in the family. Draco stood to his right, his rightful place as the firstborn heir, and Narcissa to the left, in the wife or mistress' traditional place. Entering the station, Draco could see other wizarding familes; some he knew, and some he didn't. He could spot Crabbe's and Goyle's parents coming out, presumably having just dropped off their children. He was mildly surprised that they had not stayed to see them off, and then wondered if his parents would bother doing so. Pansy Parkinson, a girl who had long since been his intended life partner, stood with her mother and father several meters away, waiting for the barrier to be less crowded. She smiled broadly as Draco strode past, and he was struck as always with disgust at the pronounced yellow tone of her teeth. Knowing it was what was expected of him, however, he smiled back in a way that implied he was exceptionally pleased to see her.

Beyond this small recognition of Pansy's presence, Draco did not show any attention to anyone, knowing that his ability to keep a straight, proud mask on in the next minutes were the beginning of how he would be viewed by his peers at Hogwarts.

In the distance, past the Muggles rushing to make their trains, Draco could see the solid barrier between platforms nine and ten, through which he was expected to calmly walk. He felt a small bubble of instinctive, abject terror forming in the pit of his stomach. He had been stepping into fireplaces and announcing his destination since he could talk, but there was still something forbidding about trying to walk through a wall. It must have shown on his face.

"Are you frightened? It's quite alright; I've seen all my brothers do it before. You can go through with Percy, if you'd like." The young voice surprised him into turning toward a large group of red haired children, most of them older than him by several years. They had entered the train station at the same time as his family, but caught up in his concerns at what he soon had to do, Draco had not noticed them. His parents, he realized, as well as the older children and the mother of the little girl, had been pointedly ignoring one another until she had spoken to him.

He recognized this clan instantly from his parents' derisive descriptions of the Weasleys, blood traitors to the core, Muggle-lovers and supporters of Mudblood rights, though they had one of the finest Pureblood pedigrees in the wizarding world. It was an outrage, a disgust, a perversion of everything that it meant to be a Pureblood. Draco didn't fully understand these hateful feelings, but knew that they were right, and that they were the proper stand to take. They were his parents' feelings; they were right.

But this innocent voice broke through all of these preconceived notions. This tiny wisp of a child, who didn't know any better had asked him a question, had reassured him. A small part of him did feel better, knowing that these older children had already passed through the magical barrier and had clearly come out alive. She was small, perhaps nine or ten

There was a moment of shocked silence, as Draco watched his father's shocked sneer slide onto his face. No one else noticed these small changes in his father's facial expressions, but that was because no one, no one in the world worshipped Lucius Malfoy as much as his son and wife did. The tallest red-head, who must be Percy, looked highly affronted at the idea of leading Draco Malfoy through the hidden portal. The Weasley mother, whose name Draco did not know, looked down at her daughter in astonishment. It was such a simple misunderstanding, for the little girl not to know that she oughtn't to speak to one of the Malfoys, but his father responded with not a little bit of outrage.

"Control your offspring, Molly," he spat out venomously, not bothering to use her more formal title. "You ought to teach them not to speak to their betters."

The red-haired woman looked on in shock and hurt. She drew the young girl, who looked confused at the anger directed at her and her mother, into her arms, glaring at Draco's father.

"If there were any betters around, Lucius Malfoy," she replied with equal acidity, "I would certainly do so. All I see are snakes in the grass."

"The natural predator of the weasel family, I believe?" his mother added delicately, arching one perfectly shaped eyebrow in cruel implication.

Lucius glanced down at his son with his angry sneer. "Come, Draco." He placed his hand on Draco's shoulder, steering him forward toward the stone barrier between platforms nine and ten.

There was an informal queue of wizarding families around the hidden platform entrance, made up of families standing around casually, waiting for the area to clear somewhat of Muggles. Led by his father, Draco saw that they were going to ignore this succession of turns and be the next people through. A group of Muggle children about Draco's age walked past, and one had the audacity to point and mock them when he saw how strangely his family was dressed. He heard his mother's wand moving beneath her robes, though she spoke no spell, and watched in amusement as the offending boy's trousers split cleanly down the back.`

"Excuse me," came a timid voice from the place where they had left the Weasleys. Draco turned to see a small, pale boy with black hair looking at Mrs. Weasley with not a little trepidation. It was the same boy who had been at Madam Malkin's with the enormous gamekeeper. Draco didn't see any parents with him, and remembered his parents were dead, though he had said they were wizarding folk, at least.

"That boy is in my year at school," he muttered, not looking at his father, though he knew that he had heard him. "He's got no family. The groundskeeper took him to Diagon Alley."

"A Muggle-born?" his father hissed back.

"No," Draco replied, still keeping his voice low. "Our kind. I don't know anything else about him, though. He's standing with the Weasels."

Lucius turned back once to see who Draco was talking about about, and his eyes feel upon the boy with his sneer of dawning realization. "That," he whispered to his son, "is the famous Harry Potter. Hero of the light side, and he will doubtless make a powerful ally, or a powerful enemy. It is said that after his parents were killed, he was sent to live among the Muggles, so he may be ignorant of our ways. Draco," He paused, smiling a cold, ruthless smile. "Befriend him, if you can. He will grow to be a powerful force in the wizarding world."

"How will I do that?"

"You're a smart boy. I've taught you well, you'll manage. Now, hush, they're coming this way."

They turned back to the barrier as though nothing had happened, and Draco felt his worry return. Although he knew the secret behind Platform 9¾, he still felt the trepidation that came naturally to one who is preparing to run headlong into what appears to be a solid brick wall. He stood proudly between his mother and father, and strode forward with his rolling trolley, hiding the worry he felt with the iron mask he had been taught to perfect throughout his life. His mother carried the large gold cage in which slept his unnamed eagle owl. His father, as was his wont and privilege, carried nothing but his ebony cane, which he only carried in public. Though many wizards carried such canes to stylishly conceal their wands, Draco knew his father's elm and dragon heartstring wand was tucked delicately into the inside folds of his robes. The cane was a deliberate ruse, in case they were attacked.

"Never show the world how powerful you are, Draco," Lucius had told his son once in his childhood, when Draco had been discovered boasting to the son of a business partner. "Let them believe you are weaker than you are, so that anyone who moves against you can be made an example to others who might try. There is nothing quite so frightening to a man who wishes to overthrow you as realizing that he has been preparing to battle less than what you are."

Lucius Malfoy lived by this example, walking with a cane that was not only superfluous in its splendor, but in its function as well. Draco knew as well as Lucius that, if they were attacked, his father's first move would be to smite down the attacker with a swing of his cane. In the moments the attacker's attention was drawn away from them, his father would reach into his robes for his wand and be crouched into a dueling position before the attacker could make another move. Draco knew this because he had watched his father practice the motion endless times in one of the lesser ballrooms of their manor home. Knowing how Lucius adored his secrets, Draco had hidden behind a door; terrified of his father's anger should he be discovered, yet mesmerized at the same time by the fluidity before him as Lucius practiced the sweeping motions over and over again.

The crowded mess that was King's Cross station every first of September was hardly a risk for attack, but the Malfoy's had not survived as long as they had by assuming their own safety in any situation.

There was a momentary lull in the Muggle traffic in the area, and Lucius nudged his son forward. Draco had not quite taken a step when his father took the owl from his mother and handed it to him. He took this to understand that they would not be accompanying him beyond the barrier, and allowed his gaze to flash once between them. Narcissa looked about to say something, but her husband nodded sharply and said only, "Go."

Not wanting his father to find him weak, Draco nodded back and turned to stride purposefully through the invisible doorway leading to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. The sight before him was incredible. The massive locomotive was directly in front of him, a blazing crimson, like freshly spilled blood, belching white steam into the air. Not wanting to cause a jam as others came through, Draco moved forward through the shadowy crowd. He quickly found the large, hulking shapes of Crabbe and Goyle, and knew that now was his moment to begin building the following and reputation his father had prepared him for.

"You there," he called to them from a few paces away. "Crabbe, Goyle, help me with my trunk."

They didn't even pause to wonder why he should expect them to do as he bid; they simply did it. This thrilled Draco to no end, and he knew with two over-sized morons as his henchmen at school, it was only the beginning of the followers he would collect over time.

The three of them took over a compartment on the train, and were soon joined by Pansy Parkinson and Blaise Zabini. Draco had hoped that their parents' arrangements for their life together would have been as appalling to Parkinson as they were to him. Unfortunately, however, she seemed to take it in stride that they would be a couple all through Hogwarts and continue happily to their life together. She sat down beside him uncomfortably close, and simpered at him, how long it had been, how they really needed to see more of one another. It was disgusting, but was a necessary evil of the life his parents had struck for him, and as their rightful son and heir to the Malfoy name and all it implied, he knew that he had to maintain an air of dignity, even in a situation that made him want to be physically ill.

Pansy draped herself across him to wave good-bye to her mother, who was standing teary-eyed on the platform outside. Draco scoffed silently at the asinine emotions the two women were showing. His own parents had wished him well and sent him off, as was proper. They were being sent away to school, where there would be no parents, no bedtimes or reminders to do homework. It was fitting that their parents treat them, not as babies being pulled from the crib, but as soft clay, ready to be returned to them as molded, fired adults.

Turning away from the unpleasant angle of Pansy's face, Draco's eyes fell on the portly red-headed woman and her little girl. He knew the woman's name to be Molly Weasley, but hadn't been able to catch the little girl's. She had tried to help him, and though it had been a pathetic attempt, she was so small that he couldn't help feeling a small jab of tenderness at how adorable she had been. It was a strange feeling, as he didn't particularly enjoy the obnoxious, rowdy antics of children, but he supposed that, as a growing man, he would soon be apt to feel the stirrings of adult urges, which would understandably include a new appreciation of children and offspring. Glancing up at Pansy, he shuddered, hoping he would never feel such an adult urge for her. He had a vague knowledge of the mechanics behind conception and birth, but certainly knew enough to know that it would require a certain amount of feeling and proximity to a girl of his choosing.

He tried hard not to think about it, and as the train began chugging down the railway, he saw the little girl waving up at the moving train. For a brief moment, he thought she was waving at him, then realized it must be her brothers in a nearby carriage. The last thing he saw before the train rounded the corner was her running down the platform, tears streaming down her face. Again, he was struck with tenderness for the small child, and hoped that someone would wipe her tears away soon, for she should not be so sad.

This strange amount of emotion was still surprising to him. He wondered if the ambient magic in the air was affecting him. Surely there were centuries of longing, excitement, and bitter-sweetness built up in the very floorboards of the entire station, and he quickly pushed the thoughts of the little girl out of his mind. Throughout the train ride, however, whenever the conversation lulled or he felt himself nodding off to sleep, the image of the little red-headed girl would pop into his mind.

And so it came to pass that Draco Malfoy arrived at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, already burnt by the fire of Ginny Weasley.

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**A/N**: Well, here ya go! Let me know what you think! The first few chapters will be a bit of a slow-going, as I've got a lot of stuff I need to patchwork together, without maiming the timeline.

Don't forget to add an **Author Alert**, so you can get updates for Brother to Dragons and One Kiss From You! If you haven't read my H/Hr companion piece, please do so as well!

Rock on, keep reading, and as always, review!

cj596


	2. Chapter 2A

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Harry Potter or his world. I just play with them sometimes, but I always put them back where I found them.

**A/N:** This chapter is much more Draco-centric than others will be. These first several chapters are going to be Draco and Ginny at school together over the years. As chapter two, this is Draco's second year at Hogwarts. I assume we all recall what happened to Ginny during her first year at Hogwarts, and I hope you'll understand that that just seemed like a lot of work to try and figure out what she must have been thinking at the time, since that part is basically canon. The only thing that's non-canon at this point is any interaction between Draco and Ginny. And probably also Draco's thoughts on Ginny, but that's a given.

And chapter two, here we go! Again, don't forget to add an **Author Alert**, and use that nifty button at the bottom to **leave me a review**. Thanks! ^_^

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_So seek your adversary to engage_

_That on himself he shall exhaust his rage,_

_And, like a snake that's fastened to the ground,_

_With his own fangs inflict the fatal wound._

—Ambrose Bierce

He was twelve; she was eleven.

"How do you know you'll get on the team?"

"Don't you worry, Goyle," he replied. "My father's taken care of that. We'll all have a very nice year on the team, won't we?"

The compartment door slid open. Draco continued his conversation with Goyle about the Slytherin Quidditch team this year. He was pulled from it as every other Slytherin fell silent, his usual cue to handle the situation. The train hadn't even left yet and he was already being recognized as the leader of the Slytherins after just a year at school. His father would be very pleased that the status he had gained in his first year had remained through diligence in exchanging letters with his "friends" all summer. In addition, he had learned some very useful information on their families, earning his father's gift of new Nimbus 2001's for the entire Slytherin Quidditch team. It would surely earn him a spot, and give him a chance to wipe the cocky grin of the damn Gryffindor King's face. He decided to give whoever was waiting a few seconds of careless silence before gracing them with his attention. They, however, were not so patient.

"I know you," came a small and vaguely familiar voice. Draco turned round, then looked up curiously, past the ill-fitting clothes that had clearly been cut for a boy, to the curly bright hair lounging on her shoulders, to the stern-set lips and unmemorable hazel eyes. The freckles sprinkled around her pale face gave what would otherwise have been an off-puttingly angry face a delicate and innocent appearance.

"Have we met?" he replied lazily. He knew, of course who she was, all too well. He had thought of her often this summer, wondering if she would be at King's Cross again, had seen her so recently in Flourish and Blotts, had watched his father slip some kind of Dark object into her book. He had been thrilled to know that she would be at Hogwarts this year, though he told himself it was yet another of the pathetic blood-traitor Weasleys to torment.

"No." She stepped into the compartment, ignoring the glares she received from the other Slytherins. She brought herself up to her full—and not very impressive—height and continued, "I'm Ginny Weasley. I saw you last year. At King's Cross. I tried to help you, and your father was horrible to my mother and my family." He noted with interest that she hadn't noted any personal offense she may have taken from the encounter. "You know, you think you're so much better than we are, because you're all so wealthy you don't know what to do with yourselves. But I just wanted to let you know…you're not."

Her speech complete, Ginny Weasley turned smartly and exited the compartment. As she slid the door shut, she paused and added, "And just for the record, we're Purebloods, too. I'd thought that would have meant something to your family."

The compartment door snapped shut.

He had to admit; she had handled herself well, coming into a compartment full of enemies to tell him off for something that had happened a year ago. What a disgustingly Gryffindor thing to do. And yet…he couldn't help but smirk at her as her eyes disappeared on the other side of the door. Her declaration as a Pureblood had been a wholly Slytherin thing to do, as was the small but powerful sense of pride she showed in that. Perhaps the youngest Weasel wasn't as thick as her brothers. There was a beat of silence before Pansy let out a squeal of a giggle that would have made Draco wince if he hadn't been so practiced at pretending she didn't disgust him.

Draco gave into the laughter with the others, howling when one of the other boys in the compartment gave a shrill mimic of Ginny's impassioned statements.

As always seemed to happen, though, he was called away from the moment to think of her haunting eyes. Even as he laughed with the others, his mind wandered away from the conversation. He had once thought her eyes to be unexceptional, but the fierceness behind her plain brown eyes held more fire than most of the people he knew had in their entire being. He wondered what she saw when she looked at him, if she saw him as a person she might want to know, or as just another Slytherin. At that thought, he remembered it didn't matter, because whatever she thought of him, he had to remember that she was just another Gryffindor. Worse than that, she was from a family of blood traitors, who had closely associated themselves with Harry Potter, the light side's golden child, if rumor were to be believed.

~%%~

Ginny leaned her head against her seat, exhaling loudly. She wished there were someone there with her to help her calm down. On the other hand, if Harry or her brother had been around to witness her little outburst in the second-year Slytherins' compartment, she would never have had the nerve to face Malfoy. She had seen him in King's Cross that morning, had recognized who he was. She had spent the last year wondering if she had imagined it, or if he had had a kinder face than his father. This morning had cemented it as her imagination running away with her yet again. Draco Malfoy was a cold, calculating boy, and she had no trouble at all understanding why her brother hated him so much. Ron was right to tell her to steer clear of the whole lot of Slytherins. She had been able to hear them, cackling at their own mockery as she walked away, trying to pretend that it hadn't struck her to see him again.

She had a memory of his eyes being a soft blue-grey, the color of clouds reflected into the water. But seeing him now, she realized it must have been the haze of time that made his face so gentle, his demeanor seem so understanding. The boy she had just seen was harsh of expression, and devoid of any kind thoughts. She wondered what could have ever made her see him as a child, just as timid as any of the others, when he had clearly been bred for power and entitlement.

Ginny was tired. It had been a late night of packing and writing to Tom, and an early, frantic morning to get everyone out the door. Thinking of the morning's panic, she opened her trunk, just to make sure, and pulled out the underthings that she had stored inside her cauldron. Resting safely between layers of cotton and pewter was Tom Riddle's diary. She glanced at the compartment door, to see if anyone was watching, and pulled out the diary, along with her quill and inkpot.

_Tom? Are you there?_ she scribbled. The ink sank into the parchment, and it seemed to be too long before fresh ink seeped out, forming new letters.

_Of course I am._

_I thought maybe you weren't speaking to me, after last time._ Ginny had been trying to sort out her feelings for Harry, which was the only reason she had been excited to have a diary in the first place. But Tom had only been interested in learning more of Harry's background. Ginny supposed that, being trapped in a charmed diary meant that he would be more inclined to listen to tales of adventure, of good triumphing over evil, than he would be to listen to a schoolgirl's crush.

_It was nothing,_ came the quick and reassuring response. _A fight between friends, nothing more. It's over now. What day is it today?_

_September the first. I'm on my way to Hogwarts for the first time._

_Oh, how I remember those days! Ginny, these are soon to be the most memorable days of your life. The magic you will learn in the old castle. Are you feeling better about the situation with Harry Potter?_

Ginny bit her lip. _Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that. He hasn't appeared on the train yet. Neither has Ron, and I'm getting worried about them._

_I'm sure he'll turn up. From what you've told me, he's an adventurous lad. I'm sure they're just having a joy ride somewhere._

_I'm sure you're right, Tom. There is someone else here, though._ She continued to chew her lip, unsure what to say about Draco Malfoy.

_Another boy already? You must be a charming young thing._

_It's not like that. He's a bit of a prick, actually. His father was quite rude to my mother last year at King's Cross, and I went to confront him about it._

_And?_

_And he just laughed at me. Like I was some silly little girl._

_But Ginny, you _are_ just a silly little girl_.

The letters swirled in front of Ginny's eyes, seeming to laugh at her. Of course she was a silly little girl. That was why Harry would never be interested in her, why people like Draco Malfoy would never take her seriously. She was a silly girl from a silly family of softhearted fools. Her vision began to darken and a red haze fell over everything she saw.

For some reason, Ginny thought it would be a good idea to get up, so she did. It also seemed like a good idea to go find out where Harry and Ron were. This seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Gripping the diary tightly, she moved to the compartment door, thinking that the Mudbloods were a good place to start. _Yes, _came a small part of her, _yes, find the Mudbloods. Find out how many there are. How bad has the infection become?_

She was reaching for the door when it suddenly slid open and a pudgy boy with big ears and nondescript features toppled in, knocking the diary out of her hand.

Suddenly, Ginny could not remember why she was standing, or why her hand was outstretched toward the door. The boy falling into the compartment must have distracted her from whatever it was she had been doing. Couldn't have been that important, she supposed.

"Goodness, are you alright?" she asked, helping him get to his feet.

"Yes, yes, I'm fine," the boy replied hastily. "Are you alright? I'm sorry I didn't mean to, it's just my trunk—" He indicated the large school trunk he had been dragging down the length of the carriage, and the wriggling toad clutched in his hand. "Do you mind if I sit in here?"

"Er, no, I suppose not," she said, still feeling disoriented.

"Are you sure you're all right?" he asked nervously. "You look a bit dizzy."

"No, I'm fine, really." She gathered her wits enough to extend a hand to the stranger. "I'm Ginny Weasley."

"I'm Neville Longbottom," he replied, dropping the toad as he reached to shake her hand. "Oh, Trevor!" he moaned dismally as the toad leapt away. "I'll be right back," he said, turning to pursue it.

Ginny pushed the compartment door all the way open so that she could pull in his trunk. As she stashed it alongside her own, much more battered trunk, she saw her diary lying open on the floor. As was always the case, there was no ink on the pages to give away her conversations with Tom, but she snatched it up and threw it back into her trunk all the same. Gazing down at the small black book tucked into her cauldron, it seemed like there was something important she was supposed to find out. Something about—something about Harry and Ron, perhaps? And why had she had her diary in her hand when Neville Longbottom opened the door? It was so difficult to remember, the details were so hazy. Somehow, it all seemed to come back to Harry. She had been arguing with Tom about Harry, hadn't she? He had wanted to know more about him, and she had only wanted to talk about having him in their house for the last part of summer. That was it. Her feelings for Harry were just getting in the way of her friendship with Tom. That must have been why she'd had it in her hand, even though she hadn't been writing anything to him.

Just then, Neville returned, toad safely back in hand. "Ginny Weasley, you said?" he asked, sitting down opposite her. Ginny noticed her quill and ink sitting out, and frowned as she put them back into her trunk, closing the lid. Why had those been out?

"Yes."

"I'm in Gryffindor house with your brothers. Ron is in my year," he said, pleased to have something in common with her. "Are you just starting out this year?"

"Yes."

"So I expect you'll be in Gryffindor with all your family?"

"Yes."

"That's very exciting for you."

"Yes."

~%%~

Draco's first week back at Hogwarts was exhilarating. He had spent his entire life being prepared for the social circles of the wizarding world, and this was the beginning of it all. These students would one day be his coworkers, friends, neighbors, perhaps enemies, and as he was reminded almost every day by Pansy Parkinson, his wife.

His father had insisted that he prepare for his classes by reading ahead in his books before even leaving home. It would be important, he had said, for Draco to have significant standing among the teachers at Hogwarts. They would allow their favorites to bend rules, have extensions, and beyond school, they would be the ones recommending their ex-students for jobs. Severus Snape had been an easy catch the year before, as an old friend of the family, and a former Death Eater, just like Lucius.

Soon after arriving at school, however, Draco stopped reading ahead in classes, preferring to enjoy his hero-like status in the Slytherin common room. The broomsticks from his father had gotten he, Crabbe, and Goyle on the Slytherin Quidditch team, and they had hammered through Hufflepuff with no question. The evenings seemed to slip away from him after dinner, and though he did not fall behind, he did not arrive to class already knowing everything, like the unbearable Mudblood. They had been nearly neck-and-neck in their first year, and now he was no competition for her at all. He told himself that he wouldn't lower himself to competing with someone so inferior, and therefore should not expend so much of his precious energy on schoolwork, especially now that he was also the hero of Slytherin house and had duties to perform in that capacity as well. Doing well in classes in just his second year at Hogwarts would not clinch his future in the same way that forming alliances early on would. He would have plenty of time to prepare for his O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s when there was no question that all of the other Slytherins looked to him for advice and decisions.

He had a few run-ins with the golden boy and his ginger friend, but mostly steered clear of them. The one Gryffindor he did not openly despise was the youngest Weasley. He was not fond of her, in any way, but she had certainly gained his respect on the first day of term, and he took it as a very serious matter of honor that he should attempt to gain hers in return. It was a principle his father had taught him well, though Draco somehow doubted that he'd ever intended it to apply to a blood traitor.

But however noble his intents, Ginny had proven a charming, if introverted girl, and she had quickly established a group of regular friends. Though he had seen her at a distance several times, it had proven very difficult to catch her alone. He may have respected her, but that did not extend to her fellow Gryffindors, and especially not Potter or her family. He saw her on more than one occasion eying Harry with the same vague interest every other girl in school did—excepting the Slytherins, of course—and felt a small pang of disappointment that her tastes would be so…_typical_. This did not stop the debt of honor he felt he owed her, however small, but it did make it difficult to fulfill. It would hardly garner her trust or respect to start a fight in an effort to get her alone, and just two weeks in, he had given up on catching her in a moment without her entourage.

In the second week of term, Draco was sitting in the school library—the only place where it seemed he could escape Pansy—alternating between Transfiguration homework and his weekly update to his father. Though the original intent of the weekly correspondence had been to keep his father aware of the actions of the next generation of witches and wizards, the discussion of the past several weeks had revolved around Draco's intense dislike for Pansy, and his desire to be released from the marriage contract his father had agreed to on his behalf. His arguments had been fruitless, however, and he was finding it difficult to put coherent, civilized words to parchment.

As he scratched his quill against his chin thoughtfully, Draco wondered if he had stumbled upon the solution to his problem with Ginny Weasley. He took out a fresh piece of parchment and began to compose his message.

By the time he had completed writing, Draco had used over a foot and a half of parchment, writing and scratching out and re-writing and changing his mind and scratching it out again. By habit, he wrote out a full draft, complete with editing marks and notations, before pulling out another piece of parchment, only a few inches long, and copying down the letter in its perfected entirety.

He surveyed the final work, reading through for any hidden meanings she might imagine into his words—he certainly didn't need another lovesick girl following him around, after all—and questioned again whether this was a wise decision. After all, sending her a letter would give her hard proof of the fact that he had sought her out, if it ever came up. Perhaps she would use it as a reason to send her brothers after him. Ron would certainly hit him, given a good enough reason, but he wasn't sure that having a polite conversation with his sister was reason enough. The boy was a pig-headed dolt, though, so he supposed anything at all might set him off, especially after the incident with the slugs. He had certainly acted quickly enough to defend the Mudblood, though Draco had to admit that it was a taboo word in most of society, and for good reason; it described them for exactly what they were, even if the bleeding hearts didn't like to openly acknowledge their inferiority of birth.

But had he found a better way? It had been over a week since their last encounter on the train, and if he did not act soon, it would be meaningless when he finally did. He carefully rolled the parchment, drawing a small length of emerald satin ribbon from his writing supplies. Transfiguring it carefully into the Un-Tying Bow his mother had taught him in his childhood, Draco set the letter down on the table and sat back to observe it, still wondering if it was asking for trouble to openly send a letter to the youngest Weasley.

In the end, he considered it a safe assumption that she would not take too much offense to his words, but that the ribbon gave away too much about the identity of the letter's sender. If Ginny chose to share, that would be his burden to bear if and when his fellow Slytherins—or her brothers—found out. The fact that he slipped the parchment into the custom leg-saddle of his massive eagle owl would draw enough attention, he decided, without delivering Slytherin colors to the Gryffindor table.

The following morning, he watched his owl land atop of what appeared to be a diary in which she was writing. It caused a bit of a disturbance, given her size and graceless landing. He saw Ginny throw him a disgusted look as she read the letter, and flipped the entire letter over to compose a reply on the back. This surprised him. He had expected no response, or perhaps one that had been as carefully constructed as his had been.

He didn't need a copy of the letter to remember exactly what it had said; he had certainly read through it enough times while writing it to have committed it to heart.

_Ginevra,_

_I wish to express my regret that you were hurt a year past by your lack of understanding at the way the class system works in the wizarding world. Your Pureblood status should indeed have earned more respect, but you must understand what your parents' positions on Muggles and blood status have done to your family's standing._

_You have the ambition and verve of a true Slytherin, but I'm sure you understand that I cannot be seen socializing with you or any of your family. I will admit, your impassioned defense of your family on the Hogwarts Express impressed me, as did your prideful statement regarding your blood status. This makes me believe that you may not agree entirely with the rest of your family's misguided intentions. If you wish to discuss this matter further, you may feel free to respond by owl only._

_Impressively,_

_D. Malfoy_

She scratched out a quick reply before attaching the letter back to the owl's leg. She flew across the Great Hall to the Slytherin table, where Draco removed his parchment without looking too excited.

_Malfoy,_

_Go rot._

_Ginny_

Draco could not help but grin as he read her rude response, and noted with great amusement that, despite the pointed nature of the letter, she had drawn a small pixie next to her signature. It was a refreshingly youthful thing to see, given the way he had been raised to skip directly from his toddler years into entitled adulthood. Wondering how far he could take this little game, Draco pulled out a quill and ink and quickly jotted beneath her note.

_Ginevra,_

_Such harsh words from so young a witch. You would indeed make a fabulous Slytherin. I'm sure Dumbledore would be willing to make an exception to the Sorting Hat's decision this early in the term. Tell me truthfully, did it try to put you with us?_

_D. Malfoy_

He attached the parchment back to the eagle owl's leg, but watched her fly out of the vaulted windows in mild disappointment. Looking back to the Gryffindor table, he realized that Ginny had already left and would have to receive his reply tomorrow.

He didn't exactly fret about her response, but he did spend a good amount of the day pondering what it would be, and what his response might be to that, and maybe how she would write back. Would they continue their correspondence? Or would one of them get bored?

By the time he got to breakfast the following morning, his owl was already perched at his breakfast plate, snapping at Pansy as she tried to pull out the parchment.

"What are you doing?" he asked irritably. He had been up quite late, unable to sleep—though he had certainly not been wondering whether he would have a reply from Ginny.

"I'm trying—ouch!—to get your mail from this stupid bird for you," she grunted, quickly adding a sickening, "darling."

"Well, as it's my mail and not yours, I think I can manage it, thanks very much," he bit sarcastically. He sat down in front of his owl, feeding her a large piece of sausage as a reward for being so well-behaved, and pulled out the roll of parchment. He turned specifically so that Pansy couldn't read it before unrolling it.

_Malfoy,_

_Leave me alone, or so help me, I will go to the Restricted Section and find a book of curses that would make your father blush and use every one of them on you._

_Ginny_

And again, the pixie. This time the writing was done in scarlet ink, giving a furious tilt to her writing. He looked across the hall and caught her eye, smirking as he reached for a quill to pen his response.

Ginny hadn't been looking to see if Malfoy had read her note, really. She had just turned to look at something besides her boring housemates. They weren't bad people, but so many of them seemed so _simple_, nothing like the bravery that Tom or Harry showed. _Harry_. She gazed up the table at him, promptly dropping her scone in her lap when he happened to glace at her at the same moment. Ron saw too, and laughed loudly at her apparent clumsiness in Harry's presence.

And because she hadn't been looking for him, she was only slightly surprised when she noticed Draco writing a response to her. He was a year older, after all, and she had only just learned how to light a wand in class. There was no way he'd have taken her threat seriously. She had hoped her brothers would have stilled his quill hand, but thinking of how Ron mocked her crush on Harry, and how busy Fred and George always seemed to be with some invention or another, and she wondered if she really was so over-protected here. Certainly at home, she would never have been allowed to spend private time writing letters to a boy; there was always so much to do, and her mother was so strict about such things. It was odd, she thought, that she would be able to send letters to so forbidden a person in the crowded Great Hall without notice, even if they were just slinging abuse back and forth.

She saw the gigantic owl swooping low over the tables and cleared a space near her plate. She had learned after the first delivery that the owl was just as entitled as her owner, and would land whether or not someone's diary, breakfast, or head was in the way. This time, she saw him watching her as she unrolled the parchment. It was filled all across the back with their notes, in different colors of ink, and she had to search for his newest addition.

_Ginevra,_

_Your venom does sting so. I'll nearly be frightened by tomorrow, I think._

_D._

~%%~

**A/N**: I know it's not the ideal stopping point, but this is not the entirety of D/G's second/first year at Hogwarts. I hit the 8,000 word mark, and decided that I should probably split this year into two separate chapters. I know I don't always have time to read huge chunks of fanfiction at once, so I'm posting this in two parts, so as not to intimidate anyone with the awesome hugeness of my…chapters. Plus, if the first few are 10,000 words each, you'll feel cheated when I get more into the story and am back to posting 4-5000 word chapters ^_^

Please don't forget and **Author Alert** so you can get updates to your email when I update this or OKFY!

Rock on, keep reading, and as always, review!

cj596


	3. Chapter 2B

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Harry Potter or his world. I just play with them sometimes, but I always put them back where I found them.

**A/N:** My apologies for the delay in posting this second half. Major snowstorms in our area killed the interwebs shortly after posting part A. It was a sad night for all involved…

~%%~

_Use your enemy's hand to catch a snake._

—_Persian Proverb_

Over the next weeks, they continued their playful correspondence, though they did not write as frequently as they had in the first two days. Ginny found that he was much quicker of wit than she was, and she took to writing her letter to him in the evenings as her reward to herself for finishing her homework—not that she saw Malfoy as a reward for anything.

As for Draco's part, Pansy was not always willing to be pushed aside. Stupid though she was, it hadn't taken her long to realize—and share with the other Slytherins in their year—who Draco was writing to so enthusiastically. He had been able to brush it off as a minor entertainment of torturing the youngest Weasley, but had still needed to be more careful as to who saw him writing.

The first thought-out letter Ginny sent him was regarding her opinions on the superiority of purebloods, and her personal opinions on Muggles and Muggle-borns. This led to a discussion of their families, and how differently they ascribed to some of the traditional practices of Pureblood families—limiting the number of children so as to affect their quality of life and upbringing, and social and political interference in the wizarding world, among other things. Ginny spoke openly of how she had grown up, and what it had meant to have six older brothers. Draco told her about being an only child, and being doted on by his parents at all times. Ginny told him how she could never get away from her own family, and yet how lonely she felt here at Hogwarts, where her older brothers all had their own friends, and took little interest in her doings.

She was not as open as she was with Tom, certainly, and she would have been shocked to realize that she was giving as much information as she received. Draco intentionally shared no information that was not already widely known, but because of his careful attention to the words he chose, he made sure that she could not infer his true feelings on any of these matters. She may have known that his mother doted constantly, but she did not know how much he craved his father's affection and pride. Ginny, who paid far less attention to how she said things, ended up telling Malfoy far more than she intended. She told him that her brothers had their own friends at school, and he was able to deduce that they had been her sole playmates as a child. She told him they lived near Ottery-St. Catchpole, and he knew that there were only a few other wizarding families in that part of the country. As the weeks went on, she learned a lot of cursory information about him that most of the respected pureblood wizarding society already knew, but that she saw as personal and private. She meant to give him only the same information in kind, keeping a barrier between them, but little by little, she gave him more of herself.

It wasn't until the end of October that things really started to get strange.

Because he watched every time she read his letter—he had found her facial expressions to be the most entertaining part of making fun of her—he noticed that she was beginning to get even paler than the late season explained. She also acquired the look of one who does not sleep enough, and never seemed to be quite paying attention when someone spoke to her. He had watched her brothers make fun of her time and again for not listening when Harry Potter said something in her presence. They seemed to think she was dreamy-eyed every time he walked past. While Draco did notice an irritating tendency on her part to drop things in the celebrity's vicinity—it made him think just a bit less of her intelligence, he told himself—he had observed the same thing when any of the older boys walked by, himself included. He had deduced that it was a matter of shyness and lack of exposure than a star-struck crush, though that was almost certainly present in some measure, as well.

Along with her apparently deteriorating health, she had also begun responding less quickly than she had before. The first time Draco's owl did not appear at breakfast was far more of a disappointment than he would have liked to admit. It was two days after that that she arrived with a response from Ginny, and his relief was nearly embarrassing. He had been worried that she had quit writing to him entirely, though his pride would not have allowed him to send her a letter asking if that were the case.

He tried not to look forward to her responses, and even tried to wait an equal amount of time before replying. The result was that they sent as many letters in the time until Halloween as they had in the first week of correspondence.

He was glad to see the smoke pouring out of her ears at the dinner table one evening. Her oldest brother at school—the pompous Prefect, Peter—had been nagging her for days to get a Pepper-Up Potion from Madam Pomfrey, and it seemed to have finally worked. Not that he was particularly concerned about her health.

By the time Halloween came around, Draco hadn't heard from her in over a week, and when he saw her in the hall that morning, she looked like the walking dead. He resolved to send her an owl that night to inquire as to her health and well-being. He had seen all of her brothers teasing her about one thing or another, and knew from their messages that, even though she could be seen with any of a dozen other first years, she had not formed a connection with any of them. She had not said this directly, of course, but their conversations had reached teasingly into other realms of life, and he had actually learned quite a bit about her.

She was only eleven years old, and so of course fairly simple in her personality and beliefs, but they were such that Draco could tell that she would be a very complex individual as they grew older, and sincerely believed at times that she was more of a Slytherin than were some of his fellow Slytherins. She believed in the rights of Muggles and Muggle-borns on a principle level, but agreed wholeheartedly that the wizarding world needed a social structure outside of the corrupted Ministry itself, though she believed it should be created by merit, not power or blood status. When Draco had pointed out that the means to financially and socially back one's personal social agenda could be considered its own kind of merit, she replied that the merit she had been referring to was moral behavior and a well-rounded background in the subject under deliberation.

Though he believed that she was intellectually similar to himself, Draco had not included Ginevra Weasley in his weekly letters to his father. He knew that communication of any kind for any reason with the child of blood traitors would not be excusable to his father's way of thinking.

Despite this, he could not help writing to Ginevra. He felt as though he could understand and be understood by Ginevra in a way that no face-to-face contact would allow. And now, when he was given reason after reason to be genuinely concerned with her well-being, he couldn't ignore the little girl who had been putting up so famously with all of his taunting, and even better, returning in kind. Her insulting turns of phrase had made him laugh at the breakfast table more than once, most of all enjoyable because of how frequently she caught him by surprise, trapped by his own careful words.

So, when the other Slytherin second-years left the common room to go down to the Halloween feast, Draco told them that he would meet them in the Great Hall. He walked with them, parchment rolled in an inside pocket of his robes, as far as the Entrance Hall, where he turned and went up the marble staircase, headed for the Owlery. He took his time in getting there. He certainly enjoyed the school feasts, but ever since learning about his letters to and from the littlest Weasley, Pansy had become all but impossible to escape. She wanted to sit beside him all the time; she wanted to study together and edit one another's papers. The past week, she had wanted to practice kissing, and Draco had had to tell her in no uncertain terms…that he was not permitted to kiss girls until he had turned fifteen. He had panicked.

On his way back to the Great Hall from the Owlery, Draco heard a small voice crying, and paused to listen. It was definitely a girl, and coming from the floor below. Draco took the nearest staircase down to the second floor and found a terrified, weeping Ginevra smearing what looked like fresh blood all over the walls. As he approached, he saw that she was actually painting huge letters.

**THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF** **THE HEIR, BEWARE.**

His eyes widened as he realized the implications of this. The arrogance of Salazar Slytherin had guaranteed that every member of his house knew in a vague, legendary sort of way, about the Heir of Slytherin. He was to release a terrible monster upon the school from the Chamber of Secrets, a sacred place of purity that Slytherin himself had built into the castle, unbeknownst to his soft-hearted compatriots. It was the unspoken charge of each and every student passing through Slytherin house to keep a weather eye for the Heir. And if Draco had just found him, in the person of Ginny Weasley, no less, well…the ramifications were astounding.

She would most certainly be expelled if discovered, stopping the necessary purification of the school. Yet, this was Ginevra, the young girl who had just the week before so forcefully rebuked his opinion that only Purebloods such as themselves should be allowed to attend Hogwarts. But perhaps she had told him that to leave a trail of evidence against her role in the death of the Mudbloods. On the other hand, hadn't Draco been raised to understand that being a blood traitor was just as bad as being Muggle-born? It was turning one's back on one's own people, an act of utter treason against the very core of what it meant to be a witch or wizard. Such a person would recognize his or her own downfall and fulfill their role as the Heir of Slytherin, culminating in taking their own life. It struck Draco forcefully to come to that conclusion. If Ginevra was not the Heir, she had to be hidden for her own safety; it would be the end of her life to be accused without having the true power to protect herself. If she was, though, he had to get her under cover before the others found out. And would they rally together behind an Heir of Slytherin that was not even a Slytherin? It was all too much to take in.

His father had taught him that, when presented with information too vast to comprehend and make a snap decision, one must keep the information from spreading any farther. All paths of thought led to a single, cohesive end: Draco had to get her out of the corridor, away from the scene. He was grateful not to have to think too hard about his motivations for not wanting her seen like this.

As she painted the final letter, she dropped her hand to her side and stared blankly at the wall. He noticed her diary clutched in her left hand, the knuckles white with the strength of her grip. He knew it had been the dark object his father had placed among her things, and his suspicion that she was not the true Heir doubled.

"Ginevra!" he whispered urgently.

She turned her head toward him, and looked at him through eyes that were not—could not be—her own. She had a look in her eye of empty, hollow evil. Tears had streaked her face in glistening stripes, but there was no anger or hatred or even fear anymore; she just looked _evil_. He turned to look down the hall for any passersby, and as his head moved, he could have sworn that he saw an older boy with black hair standing beside her, an identical look of malice on his face. But when he tried to look again, he could not see him.

"Gi—Ginny?" He stepped toward her slowly, and her head cocked sharply to one side, her eyes never leaving his face, unmoving.

It took a lot to frighten the son of a Death Eater, and if anyone had told him that he would one day be scared of little Ginevra Weasley, he'd have told them to go eat a slug. The way she stared at him, though. There was no knowledge of who he was or why he was there; no laughing memory in her eyes of the letters they had passed; no recognition that he was any more than a cowering bit of prey. She took a jerky step toward him, and he cast the only spell he could think of.

"_Expelliarmus!_"

She of course had no wand in her hand, but there was a loud bang nonetheless, and for half a second, she looked as though nothing had changed. Then, her eyes suddenly regained their life and rolled up into the back of her head. Draco had only a second to realize she was falling and try to catch her before she hit the ground. He landed gracelessly on his hip beside her, the stone floor almost certainly leaving a bruise. He felt his foot accidentally strike something and saw the book skittering across the floor from where his spell had thrust it from her hand. He was now even more certain that she could not be the Heir of Slytherin. Somehow, that book was making her think she had the power to do it, but he knew that if she were found this way, there was nothing in the world that would convince the others of her innocence.

The book had to go.

If she was the Heir, he knew that she did not need the diary to be able to perform her task. Looking around for options, he spotted a girls' bathroom just a few feet away. He grunted in annoyance, because of course there _couldn't_ have been a boys' loo anywhere near him, but ran in anyway, shoving the diary as far into the first toilet as he could manage and pulling the chain to flush it away. He got out of there as quickly as possible, for some reason still concerned about being caught in the girls' loo.

He found her still lying on the ground where he had left her. "Ginevra," he shook her desperately, looking up when he heard running footsteps in the distance. He couldn't let her be seen like this, and it had nothing to do with any _feelings_. Her guilt as the Heir of Slytherin would be confirmed if she were found with all of this paint, and she would be expelled from Hogwarts before she ever had a chance to explain herself, whether or not it were true. More importantly, if she was truly the Heir of Slytherin, he had to keep her protected. Her work was far too important to be stopped before she had even started.

From far off—he hoped at least a floor away—he heard the last voice in the world he would want to hear yelling, "_It's going to kill someone!_" Potter was coming. And regardless of whatever reason he had to think that something was going to die in their area, Draco knew that he could not be found here by _them_, because surely Harry would have her brother and the Mudblood in tow. If Potter and Weasley found him crouched over the little girl, covered in red paint, there would be much more than hell to pay.

One last look at her pale face told him that she would not be moving under her own power, and with a frantic groan, he hoisted her up into a semi-standing position and began dragging her down the corridor, not paying any attention to the paint spreading to his own garments. Much to his dismay, he came face-to-face with the most unpleasant cat he had ever met. Mrs. Norris yowled at him in irritation, no doubt from the water that was now creeping across the floor from under the bathroom door. He would have to go back later and make sure that the book was gone.

There was a secret entrance behind one of the walls here, he knew, that led to a very short room. It was only slightly larger than any of the broom closets in the school, though much better hidden. It was too close to really be a secure hiding place for long, but since it didn't go anywhere, and no one else knew of it to the best of his knowledge, he thought that Ginevra might be safe there for a few hours. He did his best to ignore the continually more insistent noises coming from the cat and drug her down the hall as quickly as he could manage. He especially wanted to be moving more quickly than that damned pool of water; the last thing he could afford was to be tracking water to her location.

The next thing that happened was something that he would not be able to forget for the rest of his life.

The creaking of the ancient bathroom door caught his attention, and despite his desperation to get her to concealment, he turned backed to look. There was what appeared to be a cock's comb nudging the door open, but it was enormous, and a sickly yellow shade of green, and had a scaled look, much more like a reptile than a bird. He heard the hissing sound at the same time that he realized he was seeing a massive head push its way through the door. Quickly averting his eyes, Draco redoubled his efforts in dragging Ginevra toward the brick wall, pulling his wand out as he went. The sound of something heavy sliding across the stone floor pursued him down the corridor. He heard Mrs. Norris let out a horrible screaming noise that was abruptly cut off.

Then, from out of nowhere, Ginevra stood on her own, facing something behind him, though looking pointedly at his shoulder. She hissed, loud and angry, and it almost sounded as though she was saying real words. A Parseltongue. So it was a basilisk. It would be a fitting monster for the Heir, after all. And this almost assuredly meant that Ginevra was indeed the Heir, despite any logic to the contrary.

The motion behind Draco stopped, then sounded like it veered to the right. He heard a clanking as of metal on the floor, but did not dare look back in case it was not gone.

He reached the section of wall he was looking for and tapped the magic stone. Most of the old stones that made up Hogwarts were scratched and worn with time, but this one had a distinct, if small carving of a crown etched into it. Draco had observed it once, while waiting for Pansy and her stupid gang of girls to finish off harassing Moaning Myrtle. He had gotten out his wand and curiously tapped the image, but it hadn't changed. Hearing Pansy's voice nearing as she prepared to exit the bathroom, he had idly thought, _I wish I could hide from her_.

The wall had promptly swallowed him.

It hadn't opened a door or removed the bricks. Draco had just been leaning on the wall, had a brief but unpleasant sensation of being _part_ of the wall, and had found himself without warning in a small room. There was a torch sconce on one wall that provided the room with the same light that always burned in the rest of the castle. He had been back to that place several times throughout his first year, but this was the first time this year he had really needed to hide.

Draco tapped the crown with his wand, hoping desperately to get them under cover before the golden child came rushing to the rescue. He didn't know how the wall responded to two people, and hoped fervently that it would bring both of them into the room. It did, just as he caught a glimpse of Potter, and then they were safe.

He laid Ginevra's pale figure on the floor, and she began shivering almost instantly. The floor was cold, he knew, but not this cold. He had spent many evenings in this room doing homework, and had never needed so much as a cloak. He wondered if this was the result of her work in the hallway. Perhaps the diary had laid a curse of some kind on her, forcing her into the role of the Heir of Slytherin? He suddenly wondered if in getting rid of the diary, he had somehow damaged her. Whatever the case, he feared there was no one he

He knew that it was a matter of time before everyone came rushing out of the Great Hall and stumbled upon the scene. He needed to be out of here before then, because surely the dead cat—or whatever was left of it—would have teachers crawling around the hallway for hours, and if he was reported missing, he would be implicated in the attack.

Spells and charms of vanity had always been a specialty of Narcissa Malfoy's, and during the past summer at home, she had made sure that Draco had perfected several of the basics. He performed a Scouring Charm on himself to remove the paint and Transfigured one of the stones into a mirror, checking his slicked-back hair by the light of the torch and his wand. He left his school robes to cover Ginevra, who was still shivering violently on the flagstone floor.

Her eyes opened slightly, and despite himself, he was relieved to see that they were back to their usual tenor. "What…happened?" she moaned. "Where am I? Malfoy?"

"I'll be back soon," he whispered.

He pressed himself against the wall leading into the hallway, relieved that she was safe from prying eyes—he reminded himself it was because her safety would lead to the death of the Mudbloods—and materialized back through the wall. He found himself pressed flat against the stone by several layers of his fellow students. There were whispers all around him as the message painted on the wall was called back. He kept hearing people mention the cat, and he supposed that would have to be Mrs. Norris, the poor dead thing. Not that he cared. He hated cats, anyway.

Draco played his part as he always did, feigning surprise and excitement when he saw the letters on the wall along with his fellow students. He was genuinely surprised to see the cat hanging from a torch sconce on the wall. At least he knew that it hadn't been killed. Not that he cared.

None of the Slytherins asked why he had not been at the feast, and he suspected that they thought him to be the culprit of the letters. That was fine with him, because if someone were implicated, a fellow Slytherin would at least be protected to some extent by his own housemates. He didn't answer any questions about the Heir, either. It may have hurt his standing as the person who was supposed to know everything in the Slytherin common room, but his standard answer became, "It doesn't matter. Just let him get on with it, and keep your head down." Which was sound advice, given that it was exactly what his father had said to him when Draco reported the recent Heir movement.

Most of the Slytherins had opted to stay up late in the common room discussing the appearance of the Heir. Draco, being who he was, felt compelled to do the same and continue perfecting his image as the leader of his year. Speculation ran wild as to who it might be. Terrence Higgs, the seventh-year former Seeker whose replacement on the Slytherin Quidditch team had raised many eyebrows, was a popular choice. His responses to queries were mysterious and encouraging, though he never openly admitted to anything. Draco supposed Higgs' sudden replacement on the team, via the Nimbus 2001's his father had donated, had wounded his pride. He did not think that the boy was intelligent enough to pass for the Heir, but it didn't particularly matter at this point.

Severus Snape's name was tossed around a good deal, too, though that led someone to ask why he would have waited so long before releasing the terrible beastie. The epiphany that the Heir would have no reason to hold in his mission had all of the older Slytherins surveying the first and second years with new potential respect. Draco sat up straighter, and for the first time was glad to have Pansy nearly crawling into his lap, because with Crabbe and Goyle perched on the back of the sofa where they sat, he was sure the others saw him as some sort of king in the making, already comfortable on his throne, surrounded by advisors. More than one of the older students gave Draco a more thorough eying than they had before. They knew of course who his father was, and how powerful was the Malfoy family. He could just see the wheels turning in their heads as they thought about the power, the long-standing tradition of Slytherins in his family, perhaps even his distant relation to Phineas Nigellus Black, one of the most successful Slytherins of his time. Yes, in their eyes, he knew he made a much more compelling case as the Heir of Slytherin than anyone else, without even trying.

When he was finally free to sneak back up to the hidden room on the second floor, both Ginevra and the diary were gone from where he had left them. He raged silently in the corridor for a few moments, scampering back down to the dungeons after realizing that Filch was sound asleep in a chair just a few yards from where he stood. He couldn't help but be a little impressed that she had figured out how to escape and realized where he'd hidden the book, but he supposed that if she was the Heir, she would almost certainly have powers that he couldn't even begin to imagine.

He sent her one owl the next day:

_Ginevra,_

_I'd like to help you, in whatever way I can._

He hadn't signed the letter, in case it were intercepted and wildly misunderstood, but he trusted that she would recognize his handwriting by now.

At breakfast the next morning, he watched her receive both of his letters, and waited for her to look up at him as she always did, eying the Gryffindor table surreptitiously over his morning tea. She read the one delivered from his own owl with a frown—that was the letter he had sent before finding her, demanding to know why she was so ill and off-focus—and the other, dropped off by an anonymous school owl, with a much different expression, though he could not choose a word to describe it. She did not look at him, but she must have known he was watching, because she calmly raised both letters from the table and tore them in half, and in half again, before stuffing the bits into her pocket and rising from the Gryffindor table.

Well, he supposed, that was the end of that.

~%%~

**A/N:** Having just written the first "love scene" for this fic (it's hot) I feel compelled to tell you guys that this fic is rated M for a reason, and if you are uncomfortable with or underage in your area for such material, please don't read. If you're anything like I was, though, I'm sure you're all going to ignore that statement entirely.

Also, for **readers of One Kiss From You**, this fic **will be taking priority** for the next few weeks while I'm getting it caught up to where we are in OKFY. Not to say that I won't update at all, just so you know that most of your reading material will be in this area for a while ^_^

Thanks to all my reviewers from the last chapter, and to everyone who didn't review but still sat patiently waiting for the update email!

Rock on, keep reading, and as always, review!

cj596


	4. Chapter 3A

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Harry Potter or his world. I just play with them sometimes, but I always put them back where I found them.

**A/N:** Another chapter split into two. Just the second half of Year Four/Three and Year Five/Four before we get to the actual plot! I have to say, I'm really enjoying the work on this "frontstory" for the characters, and I hope you are too! As always, please don't forget to check out One Kiss From You, the companion piece to BTD, and add an **Author or Story Alert**, so you can get updates on both fics!

~%%~

_With women, I've got a long bamboo pole with a_

_leather loop on the end. I slip it around their necks, so they_

_can't get away or come too close. Like catching snakes._

—Marlon Brando

"Father, I don't want to marry her," Draco said dully, sinking into a chair near the magical fire. Though the summer heat beat down outside, the pale blue flames cooled the room around them. They were in the library of Malfoy Manor just two weeks into June, and he knew that this was already at least the thirteenth time this summer that they had the same conversation, but he still did not let up hope that his father would change his mind. That he never had before was not unknown to Draco, but this was a matter of his entire future, the happiness or misery of the rest of his life. He was more aware with every passing day that his fourth year at Hogwarts would be beginning that September. Not only did each day mean one day closer to seeing Pansy again, but it meant that yet another year of freedom had gone by without his being released from the marriage contract with Pansy's father.

"Draco," his father drawled, his impatient sneer crossing his face. "I have told you time and time again that you simply do not have a choice. I do not deny that she is a wretched child, but she may yet contradict her own blood and become a lovely woman. She is of a good family and will make a fine wife for you one day."

"She wanted me to kiss her again this year." He had not yet shared this with his father, and hoped that the new information that his years of freedom were quickly retreating would urge him into a bout of fatherly affection.

"Did she, now?" Lucius mused, staring into the fireplace. "And why did she do that, do you suppose?"

"Because she wanted to be able to tell everyone, I think," he replied.

"And did you feed her that same pathetic excuse of not being permitted to do so?" Now he wore his disappointed sneer. Draco had known when he told his father that Lucius would be upset with his failure to come up with a more believable lie on the spot, or, better yet, to have plucked up the courage to do as Pansy had requested. It was a matter of masculine pride for his father that Draco had not yet made any romantic overtures to the females of his peers, and especially not even to his betrothed.

"No, Father," he sighed, knowing that his answer would disappoint him even more. "I told her that I didn't feel comfortable kissing her, because I don't like her."

Lucius stared blankly at his son for a brief moment before bursting into a rare explosion of laughter. It was not the cold, cruel laugh that was his public sign of amusement, but a hearty chuckle of true entertainment. That it was at Draco's own expense did not escape him, though he did wonder what exactly had so amused his father.

Wiping a stray tear from his face and looking at it curiously, Lucius chortled, "The truth! Such an ingenious application of a rarely useful tool!"

Draco felt himself flushing, still unsure why this was such a funny thing to have done. "I didn't know what else to say, Father! I didn't _want_ to hurt her feelings, but it seemed so much worse to lie about it now and let her find out later."

These words quickly sobered his father, and Draco had a nasty feeling that this had been a much more offensive thing to say than any low-quality lies would ever have been. His piercing grey eyes scrutinized his son.

He hesitated slightly before speaking. "I believe I may have neglected one of the most important skills you will ever know. I think it is time for me to begin teaching it to you." He strode off abruptly through the rows of books, moving toward the section where Draco had never been allowed. Lucius was a true student of Hogwarts, and had considered it a great sign of his own knowledge and importance to have such a large library as to require its very own restricted section.

He returned holding a worn book with a red leather cover and a large gold clasp. Unwillingly, Draco thought suddenly of Gryffindor house colors, and Ginevra. He closed his eyes, wondering not for the first time how many reasons he really had not to marry Pansy Parkinson. He eyed the book curiously. "What is it?" he asked. This was the first time he had ever so much as seen one of the books from the restricted shelf in his father's library. He had encountered the hexes set around that row as a child, and had never been keen to repeat the experience. He had struggled the entire time his mother tried to stop his face bleeding, and it had taken her another hour at least to make the boils go away.

"It's an old journal of sorts." Lucius flipped idly through the pages, then said suddenly, "I have taught you everything I believed you needed to know about our world, haven't I?"

"Of course, Father."

"Flying, the Dark Arts, our history, Occlumency; all the things I've thought would ready you to step into the life we have prepared for you." He turned the red journal in his hands, as though inspecting for any marks or tears, before handing it to Draco. "But there's something else you'll need to know. I realize now that I may have misled you."

"How do you mean, Father?"

"I have taught you the arts of conversation and manipulation. You have proven yourself an apt pupil in these. But it is not enough to hone your mind, my son. You must also be willing to give your entire _being_ to a cause. Your mind and…body." Lucius stood and strode to the small glass table that held his best aged bottle of Fire Whiskey. He poured himself a glass—something that Dobby should have done, Draco noted—and took a sip. Something had made his father extremely uncomfortable, and he wasn't sure what it was. "Draco," he began slowly, "what do you know about seducing a woman?"

He could feel his pale face flushing, and replied, "Nothing, Father."

"That will have to change."

"Why? I don't want to seduce anyone," he said in great confusion, and perhaps a little bit of deceit.

"You may not want to now, but someday you may need to," was the enigmatic reply. "It is a fortunate fact that women hold great sway in our society. I myself have often used the emotional malleability of a woman to coerce her gold or her husband into action. Most women make it far too easy to be manipulated. Tell her you love her, prove it with your actions when she is near, lock in her loyalty to you with her pleasure, and she will do as you wish. You need but to ask it of her."

"But, Father," Draco began, not at all liking the tone of this discussion, "what about Mother?"

"Oh, Draco." Lucius shook his head. "Your mother and I were…selected for one another, much as Pansy has been selected as your life mate. I have grown fond of her over the years, and she does indeed suit me in many ways, but she understands that my life's work does sometimes require…a woman's touch."

Draco could not believe what he was hearing. He knew that infidelity among Purebloods was not uncommon; indeed, with the popularity of arranged marriages, it was almost the accepted norm for those trapped in an unhappy or loveless marriage. But Draco had grown up primarily around his mother, his father being gone almost constantly on business. Or so that was what his mother had called it. He had loved his father through his mother's descriptions of him, of what a great and wonderful man he was, how loving and terrible he was, all at once. His brilliance, his righteousness, and the things he had done for his family. Draco knew, in a vague sort of way that his father had done terrible things over the years in his work for the Dark Lord, but it had all been for the greater good of purifying wizarding kind, keeping them from breeding magic out of the world.

Narcissa Malfoy loved her husband more than anyone else, including her only child. It was almost an idol worship that Draco had watched build throughout his childhood. Because he had only seen his father on holiday or weekends, he had assumed that that adoration was reciprocated. But here was his own father, telling him that he had sought love outside of his own marriage. He had always feared and respected his father, accepting his word as law and his opinion as fact, but he had been raised by his mother, and his love for her ran much deeper. Now he felt as though the childhood be believed he had experienced had all been a farce, a lie brought on by his father's selfish need to find solace outside of his family. He looked back on his mother's attention to Lucius and saw it, no longer as adoring or loving, but as a pathetic attempt to squeeze love from a stone heart. A small piece of Draco died in that moment, along with the glass case in which he kept safe the shining image of his father. That barrier that kept filthy rumors and unkind words about his father was shattered, leaving him questioning everything he had ever believed about the man inside.

No matter how much he detested Pansy Parkinson, Draco decided then and there that he could never betray the vows he would make on his wedding day. It was too sacred a bond of honor, and even if he could not swear to love Pansy until his dying day, he would honor her in all ways. Too much misery had already been caused by his father's romantic wanderings, he could see that now; Draco would not be the cause of that kind of suffering.

"I can't believe what I'm hearing," was all he said.

"Believe it, Draco," his snapped, sneering his disgusted sneer. "Our class cannot marry for _love_. We must marry for convenience, and for power, and to _survive_!"

Draco sat in silence for several long minutes, turning the journal over in his hands.

"So what do you wish for me to learn, Father?"

Now it was the victorious sneer, a slight lift of his left eyebrow giving it away. "Everything you need to know is in that journal. I pride myself an excellent lover. Many women have told me the best they have ever known." He grinned maliciously at Draco's shocked expression. "I may have a sterling reputation in the forefront of society, but in the background, there is always talk, and my reputation in that part of our world is of a very different color.

"It takes discretion, Draco, to make it known that you are the man any woman would want give herself to, while still maintaining your image as an upstanding citizen. When you are married, it will be even more important. It is one thing to be known as a philanderer who keeps his extra-marital actions a secret; and quite another to be publicly ousted as such in some nasty scandal. Secrets, Draco, secrets are what hold families together. What make us strong together are the things that we do not tell one another because the shock would make us weak."

"You intend me to learn this—" He lifted the journal. "—by practicing with Pansy, I suppose?"

"Not at all," Lucius replied smoothly. "You are not yet married, and are free to do as you wish, with whom you wish it. Though to present a united front—and to give yourself practice for your future—you ought to consider being a public couple with Pansy and electing to practice…elsewhere."

"Else-who, you mean?"

"Of course. We both know she is a repulsive thing; I know perfectly well that you have no attraction to her. But the one thing you must do is to become such an important part of her life that she will look the other way, no matter what you do or what is said about you. So long as she never actually finds you with another, she should be putty in the palm of your hand."

"If I were to be caught now, wouldn't that make our marriage difficult?" He had to force out the dreaded word.

"Perhaps, perhaps not," Lucius shrugged. "If you play her feelings for you artfully, you will be able to brush it to the side as the folly of youth. Perhaps two or three times, even. It depends on how stupid she is, really." He took a casual sip of his fire whiskey, raising a brow elegantly at the look on his son's face. "As I said Draco, she is a good match for you."

~%%~

He was fourteen; she was thirteen. 

The last few weeks before Draco left for his fourth year at Hogwarts were spent mostly with his mother, as usual. He hadn't spoken to his father much since being given the journal. Someone had tipped off the Department of International Magical Cooperation that a particularly large package being brought from Romania may have contained several items of a Dark and dangerous nature, and Lucius had been working quite closely with a high-level official from the International Magical Trading Standards Body to get an inspection exemption for the shipment. As a result, he hadn't been in Malfoy Manor for more than a few hours a day, and every time he left, Draco could not help but wonder if he was really going to see who he said he was, or if it was another woman. He had been so upset with his father, that for the first time in his life he did not dive into a new subject of learning just because his father declared it necessary to his future. The journal had been tucked into the bottom corner of his trunk, ignored, but not forgotten.

By the time the day of the World Cup arrived, Draco had not willingly spoken to his father in over a week. They travelled by fireplace to a sumptuously decorated arrival tent that had been set up for those with particularly choice seats. His father had taken him to the Quidditch World Cup when he was six, as a reward for taking so well to a broomstick, when it had been held in the Nirobi Desert, but he couldn't remember much beyond the noise and tens of thousands of flashing lights.

There was little more to draw his attention this time, except a brief shock of red hair that had raised a disturbing amount of hope in him, only to be dashed when he saw nearly every other Weasley with her. The two oldest, whom he hadn't met, and her mother were not present, but he was disgusted to see Potter alongside her. He wondered if they had become a couple over the summer holidays, before reminding himself—for the nine hundred and twenty-eighth time that summer—that he didn't care.

She hadn't spoken to him or written him since that fall of his second year, and as much as he hated to admit it, he had missed having someone to talk with. It had not destroyed his year not to hear from her, but he had been a bit lonely for those first few weeks, as he slowly realized that she truly had no interest in his offer of help.

Near the end of that year, it had become apparent that Ginevra had been acting as the Heir of Slytherin, but had not actually been the true Heir. Draco had been both relieved and disappointed. Had she proven the true Heir of Slytherin, he could have perhaps offered her his allegiance, and risen on her wave of power, much as his parents had done with another dark sovereign. It would even have given him a reason for wanting to know her so badly, and he could have suggested later to others that he had sensed her Dark power and had been drawn to it.

Because the fact was, after three years of a mild obsession with the tiny red-headed girl, Draco returned to Hogwarts for his fourth year to find that his fascination with her had not changed, and moreover, that the summer had been quite kind to Ginevra.

He had spent most of the Quidditch World Cup steadfastly ignoring the entire lot of them, save for a few choice insults he felt obliged to throw in Potter's and Weasel's faces, so he had not found time to take much note of her.

Now back at school, he realized that she had begun to develop the gentle curves of a woman, though he could see that she would inherit the stockier shape of her twin brothers. She had barely grown taller at all, and he secretly hoped that she would yet grow into the petite pixie-like shape that would be so delightfully juxtaposed against her aggressive personality. Her hair had grown longer, now brushing her shoulders and framing her face as it grew, her features becoming more elegantly shaped, though the freckles on her nose and cheekbones, still vivid from the summer sun, still preserved her childlike appearance. He could also see in her many of the features that traditionally ran through the Pureblood families, inter-married as they had become.

The slender, pointed nose shared by his mother was prevalent on her face, and though it looked harsh against the cheeks of youth, still puffed slightly with baby fat, he had a hunch that she would also develop the high, slanted cheekbones that had run in his great-grandfather's line, and which he himself possessed.

That his interest in her had turned into attraction distressed Draco greatly, and he turned to his father's journal in an attempt to find a reason for this. Perhaps it would tell him of measures he might take against her ever more entrancing ways.

It never offered a solution for his problem with the youngest Weasley, but the journal had many interesting—and shocking—pieces of information that his father had recorded, mostly during his years at Hogwarts, Draco soon realized. He had to work hard not to associate some of the things he read with his father, because the further he got into the journal, the more explicit some of the instructions became. There were certainly useful tidbits, chief among them a recipe for a contraceptive potion, something Draco had never considered. There were many things for him to say, phrases designed to ignite a woman's passion, to earn her trust, or to keep her at arm's length. There were things for him to do to her, in the most intimate of moments, a new kind of magic produced with only his own body, potions for him to take to improve the quality and duration of his lovemaking.

What he discovered was most present of all, however, was what _not_ to do. He learned that his lies of affection must stop just before "I love you," unless he were speaking to his wife. No other woman could be allowed to claim his love, because a woman who believes she is loved will go to any lengths to prove her love is returned. This folly, Lucius believed, was the main trouble behind affairs being brought to light. If a woman is told that she is valued above her lover's wife and family, than she will expect that she can behave in such a way as to show it.

Above all, Draco learned that he had to harden his heart to keep anyone from sneaking in to damage his resolve in all practical matters. It meant that no woman could be more important to him than anything else, unless he was one of the lucky ones whose wife was well-chosen to suit him—he suspected this would not be the case in his future with Pansy.

~%%~

The Yule Ball was in full swing, and the Weird Sisters' vivacious beats thrummed through the air of the Great Hall.

Ginevra danced with Neville Longbottom, smiling graciously at his awkward steps. He watched her take the lead with her inept partner, guiding him slowly, with no adherence to the music, through a simple waltz. As Neville picked up the rhythm of the waltz, he clearly gained confidence, taking the lead as the upbeat number swayed into a slower classical piece. It was a romantic instrumental Draco knew very well.

He couldn't help but marvel at her patience, her grace, and her movements on the stone floor. Draco reached out for Pansy, knowing without looking that she would be there, and pulled her onto the dance floor. He had taught Pansy a few ballroom dances beforehand, knowing that her usual grace was exceeded only by Longbottom's, when left to her own devices. He hadn't wanted to be embarrassed in front of the whole school, and had taken the necessary precautions to prevent the occurrence.

Draco twirled Pansy onto the floor with more flourish than was strictly needed, but enjoyed the admiring stares of his peers nonetheless. His tailored dress robes fit him perfectly, this he knew, and he also knew that having grown up with his mother, he was probably the best dancer in the school. They moved effortlessly on the dance floor, as Pansy was used to taking his every directive without question, and as they moved between the other couples, he would occasionally catch the youngest Weasley's eye, for only seconds at a time. As the two couples circled one another, growing ever closer in the Great Hall, the watching crowd grew and allowed them room to move; Draco and Pansy, for their beautiful choreography, and Ginny and Neville because no one quite trusted his newfound grace just yet.

As the number began to slow, signaling its nearing completion, Draco's motions with Pansy became less and less intricate, until they slowed into a simple three-step pattern. Draco knew this music well, and knew how best to end their dance together. As the crest of the music swelled to its completion, Draco spun Pansy slowly before lowering her to bend over his outstretched arm, her hair cascading to the floor as her back arched into a graceful and romantic dip. Pansy closed her eyes, enjoying this rare open display of affection from Draco, while he looked up surreptitiously to make sure Ginevra had seen.

The music faded to nothingness, and Draco lifted Pansy back to her feet, the action requiring no small show of strength on his part.

She followed the movement with her eyes, and he noticed, enjoying his effect on this girl who hated him. The watching crowd applauded gently, impressed by their classmates' abilities.

Ginny caught his eye, hazel to grey, and he could not look away. They stood there like that, in the arms of their partners, not noticing the others around them, or their dates, who both seemed oblivious. The Weird Sisters struck up another lively tune, and the crowd cheered in response, rushing to fill the gap they had left for the dancing couples, and though he searched for the rest of the night, Draco could not find those hazel eyes.

~%%~

Just before midnight, Pansy pulled Draco out into the fairy-lit gardens filling the lawn in front of the castle. She clasped his hand between both of hers, clinging to him as they passed other couples. Most were going inside to the warmth and the last few dances, but Pansy seemed to have other ideas.

Set back into a cove of heart-shaped topiaries stood a small gazebo, indiscreetly sized for only two people. They sat down, and being the gentleman he was, Draco pulled the outer portion of his dress robes out to fit around her. She snuggled in deeply, enjoying the rare invitation to be close to him. Neither spoke for several minutes, and Draco's mind wandered off to how lovely Ginevra had looked that evening, even as she struggled across the floor with Longbottom.

Of course, the girl by his side was surprisingly lovely, too. She had performed with grace and dignity tonight, making Draco wonder for the first time ever if perhaps their marriage would be survivable. She had played the part of his classy other half, much as his mother had done in public countless times, and had done so flawlessly. True, she was no natural beauty, and while he was certain that she had spent more time preparing than they had actually spent at the ball, the effort had paid off in full. Pansy had done something to her hair to make the normally coarse, dry texture appear soft and silky, and someone besides her must have applied her face, because it was far more tasteful this evening than he ever saw on a daily basis. Her dress robes even hung in a more flattering cut than did her daily wear. Perhaps if she were only to put this much effort into her appearance each morning, she would defy her own bloodline, as his father had put it. She would have no need to work as his wife, after all. They would have servants or house-elves to do the cooking and cleaning. What else would she have to do with her day beyond preparing herself for viewing?

He opened his mouth to offer a complimentary statement about her appearance and graceful air, when she assaulted his face, reminding him in an instant why he did not want her as his bride. He was usually well-practiced in taking her gross displays of affection in stride, but she had caught him so entirely off guard that he fell over sideways in an attempt to jerk away. Pansy crawled atop him, gathering her skirts in one hand as she licked her lips like a hungry bitch and continued her attack.

"Pansy, get off me!" he grunted, attempting to free himself from her grasp. The hands in his lapels just tightened as she tried to pull him closer. He didn't want to hurt her, but if anyone saw him in such an indelicate position—and then he realized.

That was the point, wasn't it? That was exactly why his father had given him the journal. To have his indelicate positions subtly known by his peers. He had been reading the journal as his father had requested, and now understood a bit more about why it was important. He wasn't sure that he was ready to make that leap, he was certain that Pansy was no more experienced than he, and would certainly not judge him if their first time was less than exceptional. And they didn't have to shag tonight, he supposed. They could just play with one another and see how far things went.

In a direct change from his usual reaction, Draco stopped trying to push her away, and instead returned her advances, sitting up slowly with her in his arms. He took the lead and controlled the embrace, holding her head in his hands to control where she was able to move. From the grunts and moans, he found it safe to assume that she was enjoying this new style of Draco.

"Pansy," he whispered, detesting the feel of her name on his lips. He knew the answer, but he asked anyway, "Have you ever been with a man?"

"You know I haven't, Draky." Her reply was breathless with hope, and he knew in an instant that she had been hoping for this kind of affection from him for months, and he felt a pang of guilt for manipulating her this way, but he knew the damage had been done when she added, "I've been saving myself for you. You know that."

He gulped loudly, feigning nervousness, though a small part of it was real. He stopped her from saying anything else to fill him with remorse by finding other occupation for her lips. He had nearly decided to call it all off and pretend he had been insecure, which would still allay some of her concerns of his waning affections, when he heard a disgusted scoff from the pathway behind them.

Draco looked up with his usual air of indifference in place, and found the revolted face of the last person he wanted to catch him in this kind of situation. Her face had been painted to accentuate the budding arcs of her cheekbones, and the green around her eyes highlighted the blue-green flecks among the hazel.

Ginny was shocked, and, were she honest with herself, a bit disappointed to see Malfoy lowering himself to the likes of Pansy Parkinson. Then again, she supposed, her vicious side getting the better of her, she was probably the only girl stupid enough to go for such a complete and utter git. She could see the stupidly surprised look on his face as he heard her approach, and she narrowed her eyes in response. He quickly reapplied his usual air of disdain, and not for the first time she wondered why she had ever bothered writing to him as though he were a friend.

Gathering all the disgust and contempt she could, she spat, "Typical."

"Sorry your date's not up for fun, Weaslette," Pansy shot back, though she was already speaking to Ginevra's backside as she strode proudly back up the path.

It wasn't a bad view, really, Draco thought, and he would have admired it all night had Pansy not redirected his attention by pulling herself into his lap to continue kissing him. He turned away from her kisses, whispering, "Perhaps we should go back inside."

"But Draky," she whined, pouting in a way that she probably thought was appealing, but mostly just suggested she had recently been punched in the teeth. "I want to keep snogging."

The girl had no grace, that was the problem with her. No sense of delicacy. Even after tossing such a scathing comment in his fact, Ginevra had just walked away, not allowing herself to be baited into an argument. That was the kind of thing he needed Pansy to learn, how to choose her battles and how to conduct herself like a proper lady. The lessons would begin now, he decided. "But the sooner we go back inside, the sooner we can excuse ourselves from the party to go back to Slytherin House."

She froze in his arms, and he was sure her weak little mind was puzzling through the implied things they might do upon reaching Slytherin House. Appearing to come to a final realization, she leapt up, looking for more excited than was dignified, and grabbed his hand to nearly drag him back to the castle. They were young, he knew, but marrying young and having children soon after was a long-established part of the Pureblood tradition, especially for those who were allied with the Dark side. Their life spans never seemed quite as long as the rest of wizarding society.

By the time they had reached the Entrance Hall, Draco had caught up to Pansy and had threaded her arm appropriately through his own. What he saw as a prudent and proper way to keep her in check, he knew from the journal she likely saw as him claiming her for his own, and if that was the case, he needed all the help he could get tonight. They collected Crabbe, Goyle, and Blaise Zabini, along with Pansy's gang of girls, and the Slytherins walked smartly toward the dungeons in loose formation, led by him and Pansy. There were few people left in the Great Hall by that point, most of the other students having decided to go to bed, but Draco held out hope that the impressive exit of the Slytherin fourth-years would be retold at the breakfast table the following morning by the late revelers.

When Draco and the other Slytherins in his entourage entered the common room just after midnight that night, he instructed the other boys to sleep on the leather couches in front of the fire. To his great enjoyment, though little surprise, they obeyed him, grumbling a bit but throwing congratulatory winks his way as he headed toward the dormitory doors with the girl in tow. He led Pansy down the stairs by the hand, outwardly sure of himself, and retching with self-loathing on the inside. He could not believe that he was about to take his father's advice in this subject and use Pansy's own need to be accepted against her.

The staircase down to the boys' dormitories ended in a low doorway that Draco had had to duck through for the first time that year. Pansy passed through without difficulty or comment, though she stared at him with a disconcerting level of adoration. The passageway led to seven doors, each with a silver number affixed. They entered the door bearing a shining, silver four, and he led her to the four-poster directly across from the door. It had been his home away from Malfoy Manor for years, but the ebony wood and green satin sheets seemed ominous in a way they never had before.

"What do we do now?" Pansy whispered. Without waiting for an answer, she reached behind herself to begin undoing her dress, her eyes never leaving his face. He had to give her credit for her ability to follow through. It steeled his resolve to know that she was more committed to this night than he was, and he pulled himself up straight and proud. Even if this was the beginning of a lifetime of lies, he could build a strong foundation for her. He had promised himself that he would do his best to take care of her, and that meant allowing her to believe that he loved her and wanted to be with her.

"I'll take care of that for you," he replied, moving behind her, where he could both undress her and compose himself. His fingers moved deftly at the tiny buttons lining her back. He held his breath for a moment as the first inches of her skin were bared to him. This was it, he knew. This was the moment where he could turn her away in shame, or be his father's son and lift the weight that would be his to bear for the rest of his life.

Her back was pockmarked and covered in small red pimples. Ignoring the sour taste rising in his throat, Draco lowered his open mouth to the surface of her skin and let out a low, silent breath. He could feel the heat curling around his cheeks, and the answering shudder that ran through her entire body told him that this craziness might actually work. He brushed his dry lips across the same expanse of skin as his fingers continued to open her dress. As the journal said, he built up the sensations wherever he touched her, first with his breath, then his lips, and finally his tongue and fingers.

Pleasing a woman actually was quite fun, he soon realized, and as long as he did not think too much about the specifics of the woman in question, he found himself growing aroused. He brought her twice with his fingers and mouth before he entered her to take his own pleasure.

Up until that moment, Draco had been more or less ignoring the person and enjoying only the body beneath him. As he adjusted himself at her entrance, however, he found that it was impossible to avoid looking at Pansy's face. He understood at least part of why this was considered such an intimate act, and he hated himself even a little bit more for not being able to provide her with anything more than this farce of intimacy.

Just as he was about to call off the entire thing and let her leave with the pleasure he had already given her as his gift, Draco looked deeply into her muddy green eyes and saw…nothing.

"Pansy," he whispered, being careful to keep his voice soft and kind as the journal instructed for such moments, "are you sure you're ready for this? It doesn't have to be tonight."

"I want this, Draco," she replied, using his given name that she so often butchered. "I've been waiting for this for so long."

"Why?" He couldn't help asking. There was no personal desire on his part to have sex tonight, and he could not help but wonder what was going on in her mind.

"I've never wanted anything more than to be yours. I'm ready to give myself to you completely."

The reply was both unnerving and revealing. In that answer laid the entirety of the reason that he would never be happy with Pansy as his wife. Her love for him was shallow, just a word she had applied to something she didn't understand. And while she may have wanted to love him, what she really wanted was for him to love her, whether it was founded or not. Without him, she would be unpopular and generally disliked, and they both knew it. With him bound to her by the will of their fathers, however, she was able to be seen by his side, and bask in the popularity that his name, his family, and his reputation offered her.

He slipped gently into her, already stretched and relaxed by his earlier ministrations, so that she felt little pain. The sensations of her body around him brought his entire focus down to a single part of his body, and he began to move out of instinct, having to force himself to keep her pleasure and comfort in mind. She made an awful lot of noise, but he supposed that was a good thing, and in the moments when he felt his final pleasure building, he remembered that he was supposed to look deeply into her eyes again to show her that they were connected. The look he found in her eyes was nearly idolatrous.

No, he realized, she did not love him, and as he felt his release approaching, he closed himself off to her pug-like face and boring eyes, and saw instead a pointed nose, and bright hazel eyes, and splattered, vivid freckles.

~%%~

**A/N**: So…yeah. Let me know what you think! Second half of Chapter 3 to be up in a few days. I have a major lab practical on Thursday, so it may be as late as Friday afternoon. I will warn you though, because of where I chose to divide the two sections, Chapter 3B will not be nearly as long as 3A.

Rock on, keep reading, and as always, review!

cj596


	5. Chapter 3B

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Harry Potter or his world. I just play with them sometimes, but I always put them back where I found them.

**A/N:** I am SO sorry for the delay in posts. I had a lot of trouble writing this chapter. I'm still not one hundred percent happy with the final product, but I think in this case, I have to accept that this is just a mechanism to get to the next chapter (most of which is already written, another factor in the delay of this one), and that it may not be the best thing I've ever posted. It's certainly not the worst, though.

Hopefully, you understand what I was trying to convey in this chapter, and don't judge me too harshly, because the next chapter is **hot**. Don't forget to add alerts!

This chapter is dedicated to **MagicMariah, brianaangel, **and** Neca**, the story's only reviewers thus far. So for a while at least, this story is entirely for you guys!

~%%~

_Exaggeration is to paint a snake and add legs._

—Proverb

The Yule Ball had excited most of the school to the point that holiday homework had fallen by the wayside. All the tables in the common room had been filled with panicking students when Ginny had descended the stairs the morning after Boxing Day, and so she had had to resort to a spot in the library. It seemed that the other house common rooms had a similar problem, for when she arrived, she found that there was hardly a table to be had in the library. She ended up roosting in a squashy armchair in the historical section, and though it was comfortable, she had trouble arranging herself so that she could still hold her books and parchment.

She had finally settled in to a particularly confusing bit of Potions homework, when voices trailing up the adjoining row distracted her entirely.

"…and after the Ball, oh you just wouldn't believe what happened." It was Pansy Parkinson, Draco Malfoy's girlfriend—not that she cared who the little bitch dated. Or who Pansy dated, for that matter. She was talking to someone whose voice Ginny recognized as a Slytherin girl in her year, Magnolia Bombart, an idiotic little flirt who made Ginny's teeth ache with a desire to punch her.

"What happened, Pansy?"

"Well, remember how all the other boys our year had to sleep in the common room that night?"

"Of course I do," came the vapid reply. It was clear from her tone that she hadn't put the pieces together yet. Her airy tone reminded Ginny of Luna Lovegood, another girl in her year who was in Ravenclaw, though she was much more intelligent than her usual demeanor revealed; Bombart had no such hidden talents. "I have been wondering why that was."

"Why on Earth do you think, Magnolia? We shagged, and it was just marvelous!" Ginny scowled at the news, disgusted to think that they had done such a thing. It wasn't the act itself that bothered her—she had actually given it a lot of thought Malfoy was a good enough looking boy, she thought, but Pansy was just awful, with her squashed little upturned nose and those teeth that always seemed to be escaping from her mouth.

"But you're only fourteen!"

"And so?" Pansy snapped. She lowered her voice, and Ginny leaned against the book shelf separating them to better hear. She didn't really care, certainly, but it was at least more interesting than Snape's dreary holiday assignment. "We're to be married after school. What does it matter if we start a bit early? That was Draky's opinion, anyway."

Ginny was shocked out of her fascination by the news that Malfoy was betrothed. She had heard the rumors, of course—it was a common enough thing among the wealthier pureblood families—but had never stopped to consider who it would be. As she had assumed the night of the Yule Ball, she had always thought that Pansy was just a convenient fuck for him to keep around, not an actual competitor for his affections—_not_, of course that there was _any _competition, none that Ginny had taken note of, in any case.

"He took me out into the grounds and held me in a gazebo, kissing and saying how he wanted me. And then we went back down to the common room, and he ordered all the other boys out—and I could just see what a fabulous leader he's going to be when we're out of school—and he carried me to the bed, just like in the stories, and—" She left a dramatic pause to imply the rest, but Magnolia Bombart still wasn't bright enough to stop talking, Ginny thought.

"And then what happened?"

"Shut up you daft cow, I'm trying to tell you!" Pansy snapped.

Ginny could hear Magnolia mumbling something, but she could not hear what. When Pansy began speaking again, her voice took on a dreamy quality that had Ginny burning up inside with envy, though she attributed it to indigestion. "Anyway, he undressed me slowly, as if he were savoring every second of our time together. And when he touched me—" She squealed indelicately. "He didn't even touch me at first; he just _breathed_ on me…"

"He breathed on you?" Magnolia replied, sounding confused, and Ginny had to admit that she was, as well.

"I know it sounds strange," Pansy sighed, "but it was such an intimate feeling, like a thousand tiny fingers brushing across my skin all at once. And then when he finally did touch me, it felt a thousand times better, I'm sure, since he had only been _teasing_ me before that."

The book nearest Ginny's head moved, causing her to jump. Pansy's voice began moving away, and Ginny heard the sound of chairs scraping the floor on the other side of the row. A small gap left by the book Pansy had removed allowed her to see out into the main section of the library to a small, round table where Magnolia sat, looking very interestedly to the other person at the table, whom Ginny could not see, but whom she assumed was Pansy. Parchment was unrolled across the table to reveal the beginning of a piece of homework. Magnolia pulled out a copy of _Standard Book of Spells, Grade 3_ that looked so crisp and new it might never have been opened before. This, Ginny thought spitefully, would certainly explain a lot about the dim-witted little heifer.

There were several other people at tables around them, and Ginny supposed that they wouldn't continue the same topic of conversation where so many other people could hear. At least, she hoped not, because while she could see their mouths moving with occasional conversation, they were too quiet for her to be able to hear them.

"Oh, no," she heard Pansy whine suddenly, snapping her book shut. "This isn't the book I need at all." She glanced back at the bookshelf behind which Ginny sat watching them, and she spun around quickly in her seat, though she doubted she could be seen through such a small gap. "No, this is a 'P-E'. The one I need is a 'P-O'."

"From what section?"

"History."

Ginny looked up to find Podnacious, Percival's_ Caeser's Wand Hand: The Truth of Pax Romana _on the shelf directly opposite her armchair, nestled in beside Pordley, Hementia's _Clearly Not a Leprechaun_. She heard chairs scraping again from behind her, and looked back through the gap to find Pansy and Magnolia gone. Quickly stuffing her quill and parchment into her bag, Ginny grabbed her Potions book and ran to the opposite end of the row of bookshelves, hoping that they would not come round the corner in front of her. For some reason, she did not want to have a confrontation with Pansy right then. When Malfoy was with her, he tended to calm her down and keep things from escalating, but without him to rein in Pansy's caustic nature, Ginny was quite sure that she would try to start a fight, and in her present state of mind, Ginny might have responded with a fist.

The next row over was nearly identical to the one she had just left, right down to the armchairs scattered about. The first chair she passed was occupied, though she was too shaken to say hello, and she dropped into the next empty one. The two faded leather chairs were separated by a small table bearing a lantern that filled the dim row with warm light.

Settling into her new armchair, Ginny could hear Pansy and Magnolia making their way back up the aisle she had just left. She cracked her book open, searching for her page, but her attention was caught up by Magnolia's muffled voice asking, "So, what happened when he…?"

The question hung in the air for several seconds, and Ginny stopped flipping through her pages so as not to drown out the sound of the answer.

"Well, before we—you know—he touched me…down there." Ginny could feel a slight flush creeping up her cheeks as Pansy's description became suddenly more graphic than she had expected, "And you know how his fingers are so long and slender? I think he has at least four knuckles on each finger, some of the things he was able to reach inside me."

Magnolia squeaked. "You mean he put his fingers…?"

"Oh, yes, Magnolia," she sighed. "I know you're still so young, but I really hope that you have the chance to feel something like that in your lifetime. At the end, it was like…like my whole body tensed up and I thought for a moment my heart was going to stop and I would just die right there, on the spot, and I was pretty sure I _had_ died, only then I came back to my body again, and he did it all over! And it wasn't just his fingers either. He used his mouth, and—"

"Sweet Merlin!" Magnolia gasped.

"Sweet Merlin," Ginny agreed in a whisper. A frustrated sigh came from her right, and she suddenly remembered that there was someone else sitting there. She saw in her peripheral that they stood and crossed to lean against the opposite row, and she wondered if they weren't made uncomfortable by the conversation floating into their row. She looked up to apologize for the situation, even though it was entirely out of her control, and got the shock of her short life.

Draco had been contemplating his evening with Pansy, having escaped to the seemingly endless rows of the Hogwarts library, where few of his fellow Slytherins ever went. The details of every moment had been replaying in his mind for the past two days, since he had woken up to Pansy in his bed and snuck off to breakfast without saying a word, like a complete coward. As he had known she would, Pansy had brushed it off as a boys' thing when he had told her that he was too hungry to wait, and she had thought it sweet that he'd let her continue sleeping in his bed.

The most confusing wrench that could possibly have been thrown into his private meditation was the owner of the hazel eyes that had filled his mind in the second before ecstasy, when she had come barreling round the end of the row and plopped down into the chair next to him like it was a perfectly ordinary thing to do. He wasn't completely sure that she even knew he was there, and he was more than a little curious as to why she had been in such a hurry just to arrive and sit down. The voices that came across the row to his back, however, provided his answer. Had she been listening to their conversation from the other row? Had she come to escape discovery by the two gossips? How much had she heard about his forays into passion with Pansy?

It was unacceptable for her to know such things, for some reason. It wasn't a matter of his personal privacy that was in question. Rather, he was finally forced to accept that he didn't want her to think less of him, and if there was any part of his life that truly shamed him, it was his romantic connection to Pansy Parkinson. He felt guilty for caring what a blood traitor thought of him, and knew that it was wrong, but it still set him on edge for her to be hearing such things. Had it been anyone else in the castle, he knew he would have filled with pride to sit here and know that Pansy boasted of his skills to others. This was precisely what his father had meant by building a discreet reputation as a skilled lover; quiet conversations among his lovers and their friends, overheard when they thought there was nobody listening. He would have flirted with any other girl, fueled by his need to get the memory of Pansy off his skin, and a desire to begin building this next chapter of his story.

He had enjoyed his time with Pansy, insofar as he had enjoyed his first time with a woman. It had been fun, and easy to bring her pleasure, and he was quite sure that he would have found the experience immensely more pleasurable if he had been with a different girl. But his father had made a good point in one of his weekly letters; that Pansy, as long as she believed him devoted to her, would sing his praises to others, even if he was not as good as she actually said he was. It would allow him time to practice, and live up to the skills she claimed he possessed. If Draco could time everything perfectly, by the time other, more reliable sources of rumor were telling the girls at school that he was a dragon in bed, he actually would be, and it would appear to anyone who had seen him develop in Hogwarts that he had stepped into manhood as the mythical ideal lover. Had it been anyone else, he would have been eager to continue his practicing, at least to see how hot and bothered he could make her.

But it was Ginevra sitting there, the one girl he wanted whom he knew he could never have as his own, and he was certain that she would see him now as nothing more than a womanizer, as someone who had taken advantage of Pansy's needy nature. Which, truth be told, he had. She just didn't understand that he had already been bound to the girl, and for his own sanity, he needed to keep Pansy happy and convinced that they were a good couple together.

"Sweet Merlin."

The nearly silent statement of awe left him wondering what would be left of him if Ginevra ever _tried_ to entice him. Those two, tiny words had entered through his ears and were now threatening to exit from somewhere near his belt buckle. He stood up to keep her from noticing how her apparent approval of his bedside manner was affecting him. If she saw him in the same light that he saw her—as a fascinating individual whose company and correspondence and very existence had begun to blossom into a romantic attachment—he couldn't stand to know. He knew that it would tear his resolve to shreds, leaving nothing left of him but a pitiful shell of a man, on hands and knees, begging for her affections. On the other hand, Ginevra was only thirteen. He was fourteen, which seemed an acceptable, if young age to enter into the adult world of love, but she was still a child, and to be thinking of her in such a way was sick, wrong.

He needed to get away from her.

Groaning in irritation at how complicated his life had suddenly become, Draco moved away from the light of the lantern to lean against the opposite row of books, his eyes carefully closed against her dangerous gaze.

Malfoy looked good leaning against that bookshelf, Ginny thought. _Really_ good. His relaxed posture thrust his hips forward slightly, causing his uniform to sag backward, outlining his thin, lithe figure. The edge of lamplight cast a gaunt shadow across his features, emphasizing how slender and pale he was, head to toe, from the tips of his patent dress shoes to the window's peak in his ice blond hair, and Ginny was a tiny bit upset that his hands were tucked into the pockets of his slacks. She was dying to know if his fingers were proportionally slender, as Pansy had claimed they were.

"I think it must be him, because I've never done that before, obviously, but I think if every man could do that with his tongue, no one would ever get anything done in this world." Pansy was still talking to Magnolia in the next row over, and now Ginny could not peel her eyes away from Malfoy's mouth. The thin pale lips were still a comparatively vivid pink against the pallor of the rest of his face, and he smiled as though aware that he was being watched. An even brighter rose tone appeared without warning as he ran his tongue across his lips.

Draco wondered if she was watching him, and as Pansy raved over his talented tongue, he smirked slightly, and licked his upturned lips.

Ginny gasped involuntarily, and he turned to look. She whipped her head back into the pages of her book, randomly choosing a line to stare at without reading. Her mind was too scrambled to even read the text; rather, her eyes floated in a general left-to-right pattern across the page as she hoped fervently that she was at least holding the book the right way up.

"Oh, and Magnolia, his _cock_." Ginny jumped at the unexpectedly filthy word, but found that it really did suit such a slimy bastard as Malfoy. "I can't even describe how it felt in my hands. It was like…like a tree grown skin, or like…like satin wrapped around a broom handle."

"That long?"

"Don't be stupid, Magnolia," Pansy snapped. "I was just comparing the two, not stating measurements. Although, it was quite large," she added hurriedly, and with a distinct air of superiority, Ginny thought. "It did hurt a bit, you know. It will hurt your first time, at least a little bit. You just have to make sure that you have a caring and considerate partner, like my Draky."

He had passed the point of pretending to ignore Ginevra, and was now watching her every move. Not that she was moving at all, really. Her head moved back and forth across the page as though she was reading, but her eyes were fixed in her head, out of focus. He wondered if this really was too much for her to know about things of this nature, especially as they concerned him, personally. If he had ever had a dream of a chance with her, he would have wanted her to know about these things, but not with him standing right there.

Any fantasy he'd ever had about her learning of his prowess in the bedroom had not involved him standing idly by while she listened to other people talking. If he was present in the fantasy, then it hadn't even involved him talking. Or standing.

_Not_ that he fantasized about Ginevra. At least not often. It was a mild crush, something that would fade over the years as she grew into her family's traitorous views of the world. He just had to wait it out, if he could survive that long. As long as it happened before she reached true womanhood, he was almost certain his strength of will would win out. For now, he had to do something to stop his powder keg of tension building as they both refused to acknowledge one another.

"You're too young to be hearing this," he murmured without looking at her.

"You're too young to be doing that," she shot back, not daring to look up, either.

"I'm older than you are."

"Barely."

"It's enough."

She sat in silence for several moments, unsure what to say in response. "You've no idea what I'm old enough for, Malfoy," she said, finally looking up at him. She hadn't meant to imply anything, but she wanted to wipe that look of smug superiority off his face.

Her answer shocked him into looking her in the eye, and seeing the pale flush creeping up her cheeks, he wondered just how innocent she really was. It upset him more than he liked to think that she might have already given up her virginity at thirteen. He couldn't place the source of it, and carefully avoided the thought that it would mean there was no possibility he would be the one to introduce her to a man's body. He felt anger building inside his chest, jealousy burning against the unknown boy who had deflowered her so young. The anger came out at her, instead, for allowing it at all. "You do go for the older boys, don't you? I suppose you're used to it by now. First Potter, and now…Thompson, isn't it?"

"Dean Thomas," she corrected calmly.

"Yes, I've heard he took quite an interest in you after the Yule Ball," he sneered, hoping his tone came across as disdainful, rather than envious. "I suppose you got your use out of Longbottom and stepped up?"

"And I've never been involved with Harry, thank you very much," she continued as though she had not heard his jibe. He was impressed yet again with her ability to stand up calmly to him. It was not something that everyone could do; even her older brother lost his cool more often than not. "But a lady doesn't kiss and tell."

Pansy chose that very appropriate moment to say, "The first time I saw him naked, it was like staring at some marble statue. The very peak of what it means to be a man!"

That she was complimenting him with every word out of her mouth did not escape him, but Draco still felt sick to his stomach knowing that Ginevra was hearing it all too, and ashamed that such a stupid person was his, to have and to hold. He pulled his hands from his pockets to stand up straight, and he didn't miss the way her eyes followed his hands, examining them where they lay at his sides.

"Do you see something you like?" he shot, aware even as it came out that it was unearned in its harshness.

Ginevra eyed him evenly for a moment, before responding, "Doesn't everyone?" She looked back to her book, and seemed to actually be reading it this time.

Had she just called him a slut? Draco couldn't believe his ears that someone would actually consider it a bad thing for him to be good in bed, and yet, that seemed to be exactly what she had just implied. As he opened his mouth to throw a heated retort in her face, Pansy's shrill voice reached them yet again.

"I could just feel him inside me, like he was stretching me out all over, not just down there. It was like all my organs felt a bit bigger, like there was more room to breathe and more space for my heart to beat, and all of the thought left my brain when he was inside me."

"Wow," breathed Magnolia. 

Draco thought he saw movement from Ginevra out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned to look, she was perfectly still.

"But I haven't even told you the best part yet!" she squeaked, lowering her voice, though Ginny and Draco could still both hear it fine. "At the end! He came inside me, and it felt like all of that heat and passion built up and became _real_, and he spilled it all inside my body. And I could feel how much he really loves me in that moment."

"Did he say it? That he loves you, I mean?" Magnolia asked curiously.

It was a sensible enough question, but all parties fell into silence for a long moment, before Pansy said uncomfortably, "Well, he didn't have to. I could feel it in the way he touched me."

Draco was quite pleased that his charade had paid off. At least if he was going to hate himself for doing it to her, she would be happy with it. Ginny thought she might throw up, though she couldn't put her finger on why.

Magnolia seemed unimpressed. "But he didn't _actually _say it?"

He found himself a bit peeved that this idiot little girl had chosen that moment to put her meager intelligence to work. That was the one lie he hadn't been able to tell her, if for no other reason than it would mean acknowledging that he could not escape a future with Pansy.

"Well…" Pansy hesitated. "Yes. I mean—well, I thought you meant did he say it _while_ we were shagging, but no, he actually said it afterward."

_And so it begins_, he thought glumly. He had expected her to tell this lie at some point, but he hadn't thought it would be so soon.

Ginny saw his disappointed and disgusted face and felt a slight sinking feeling that he might really love the pig in the next row. "Not something you wanted anyone else to know?" she mocked.

"Shut it."

"Don't worry, I wouldn't want to tell anyone either," she continued. It was rare to find a string with Malfoy that could be played so easily. "I'm actually a bit surprised that she had the nerve to share." She faked a small shudder. "What a terrible thing for her reputation if it got out."

This was, of course, a blatant fabrication, but as his reputation among the other students seemed to be Malfoy's most prized possession, Ginny couldn't help but poke a bit of fun at it. His status was what protected Pansy from being as openly detested as she was behind closed doors, and just about everyone knew it. There was more than one other girl who had her eye on Malfoy, Ginny knew, and they were all waiting for the day that he got sick of Pansy's just being an easy lay. From what she had just heard though, that day would not come, if they really were engaged to be married.

"You have no idea what you're talking about," he snapped, stepping toward her. "So just shut up, you little brat."

"_I'm_ not the one hiding from my girlfriend behind library stacks." She knew as soon as it was out of her mouth that she had crossed a line. His face contorted into one of shock and anger, which mixed with his usual disdain, was quite disturbing. Afraid of his reaction, she turned away.

She was staring so hard at a fixed point in her book that she wasn't even aware of his motions until she understood quite clearly what Pansy had meant about him breathing on her. His mouth was so close to her face that she didn't dare turn her head in case she would accidentally kiss him. He let out a shuddering, angry breath that caressed her cheek like a warm hand, sending goose bumps up the entire side of her body.

"Eavesdropping's a nasty habit, Ginevra," he hissed, standing immediately and striding out of the aisle. She didn't watch him go, too shocked to react in any way, but heard muffled footsteps moving back up the row on the other side of the shelves to her back.

"Draky!" Pansy exclaimed excitedly. Ginny wondered whether he had composed himself into a pleasanter demeanor for his girlfriend, or if she was just too stupid to notice that he wasn't happy to see her. She got her answer from his biting, terse tone, though she could not hear exactly what Malfoy was saying.

Fury at having been shown up by Ginevra—and worse, made a fool by his own fiancée—was the only thing he could think of as he approached Pansy and Magnolia. They had their backs to him, peering up at the shelf just out of their reach. As he stalked angrily toward them, Pansy hoisted herself onto the ancient shelved, climbing several shelves up to reach the book she needed. She had a habit of rolling her skirt up higher to make it shorter and, she thought, sexier. So nearing them, Draco was offered a choice view up Pansy's skirt, and while he found her unappealing as a whole, he had to admit that the female body was an enjoyable retreat, even if hers was not an ideal example.

At first glance, he thought she wasn't wearing any knickers at all, but he quickly realized that there was a thin strip of pink fabric lacing between the orbs of her pasty arse. It was twisted and looked stained, and the effect was gag-inspiring rather than attractive. This only added to Draco's humiliation at her very existence, which in turned fueled his anger at her for not being Ginevra—no, that wasn't right—for being such a stupid, ugly, graceless girl. Yes, better.

"Pansy!" he snapped, grabbing her arm. He was careful to keep his voice low, knowing that _she_ was probably still listening in the next row over.

"Draky!" She sounded so excited, so completely unaware that he was upset with her, and that just served to make him all the angrier. He grabbed her arm and jerked her backward so that she nearly toppled off the rack.

"What do you think you're doing?" he snapped as he dragged her to her feet.

She spoke in a much quieter tone of voice, angling her body toward him as though she didn't want Magnolia to hear them fight. "What do you mean Draky?"

Her tone was almost…hurt. It was enough to stop Draco and make him realize that he was angry with her because of someone else's actions. Pansy was certainly a stupid girl, but she would realize something was up if he expressed his actual feelings on Ginevra having overhead her conversation with Magnolia. He had to give her a better reason for his sudden anger with her, without letting her find out about his interaction with Ginevra in the next row over.

With a small sigh of false regret, Draco let go her arm and said, "When you have your skirt rolled up like that, it makes me uncomfortable that anyone can see up it. And then you go crawling up the shelves like that with _those_ knickers on and…"

He could tell by the relieved and coddling look on her face that she had bought yet another lie. He didn't feel so bad about this one, he noticed, but put it down to the fact that it was much less manipulative than what he had done the night of the Yule Ball.

Pansy placed a clammy palm on his face, and rather than turning away like he wanted to, Draco closed his eyes as though content to have her touching him. He felt Pansy's lips suddenly on his own and heard a small adorable noise from Magnolia that made him want to punch her teeth in. It was a good thing his eyes were closed, he thought, because he was certain that he wouldn't be able to keep the revulsion out of them if Pansy were to happen to look. Her kisses, as always, were sloppy and loud, and she moaned as though he were touching her intimately. When she finally pulled away, Draco subtly wiped her saliva off his chin.

"Oh, Draky," she whispered up at him, blowing her foul breath into his nostrils. "You're so sweet."

~%%~

As Pansy's stories about him began to spread throughout the first weeks of the spring term, Draco found himself being approached by more and more girls. The hubbub of the two remaining Tri-Wizard Tasks offered him adequate excuses to get away from Pansy and find time to rendezvous with other girls in their year. One sixth year girl even approached him in the common room one night after watching him bully a few first year Ravenclaws in the Entrance Hall.

All in all, Draco's life was coming together exactly the way his father had planned for him, and he kept his father updated on all of his conquests, keeping a small page in the back of the journal to list the girls and how often they came back. He also wrote down anything about them that might later prove useful, though he did not share this with Lucius.

There was little that troubled him, apart from Potter's ability to yet again worm his way into the spotlight, even when he was not supposed to be eligible to enter the tournament. This too, however, aided Draco's plot to build his underground reputation, as the Tri-Wizard Tournament took up so much of everyone's attention. Even on days when there was nothing out of the ordinary happening, the mere presence of the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students altered the daily lives of the residents of Hogwarts, so he was often able to slip away unnoticed for a quick tryst. Those who were sick of discussing the tournament were also likely to look for new avenues of discussion, and the sudden rise of the Malfoy heir became a common topic of conversation among such students.

There were a couple of close calls, including a late-night run-in with the blasted cat and a quick cover-up as Pansy burst into his dormitory one afternoon. He still smiled to think that she hadn't even noticed there was a girl-shape lump beneath his comforter, even as it made him sick with guilt.

The guilt was the worst part of the whole thing, he knew. He doubted his father had had such qualms, but it disgusted Draco to know that he spent so much time lying to those around him. He spoke openly with Crabbe and Goyle about his almost weekly new conquests, but he was careful not to speak too loudly when anyone else was nearby. Pansy, to the best of his knowledge, had no idea that he was anything less than completely devoted to their relationship. He told her that his school work was the reason that they didn't spend as much time alone as she would like, and while it was true that he often spent many hours in the library with other students, the subject didn't always stick to Transfiguration and Charms.

He was even more careful to stay away from Ginevra. He took more note than he was comfortable with of her budding relationship with the Thomas boy, and found himself consistently wanting to hex him in the back of the head as they shared Snape's classroom twice a week. She seemed to be ignoring him entirely, though he often noticed her standing close by when Pansy or other girls discussed his latest impressive bedroom trick.

Though Draco had still been unsuccessful in convincing his father to renege on the marriage contract, his life appeared to be growing more satisfactory by the day.

That was, until the night of the third task.

~%%~

The night that his left forearm burned for the first time in fourteen years, Lucius was in the enormous master bedroom of Malfoy Manor with his wife. He was admiring the light reflected from an antique sapphire necklace as it was cradled between her delicate collarbones. He had purchased the enormous stone as an apology for a fight they had had the week before, when Narcissa had received a message from her imprisoned sister indicating her suspicions that the Dark Lord was once more on the rise. Terrified at the possibility of the return of his abandoned lord, Lucius had lashed out at his wife, admonishing her for listening to her half-crazed sister.

When his arm burned, Lucius thought errantly that a spark from the fireplace had leapt and caught his sleeve on fire. Though the Mark had been growing stronger, Lucius had hardly noticed, absorbed as he always was in his own affairs. As he glanced down with the loving smile still on his face, preparing to cast a quick extinguishing charm, he realized the pain was not moving to his skin, but rather coming from it. In abject horror, he looked from his left forearm to the confused face of his wife, his carefully composed mask forgotten. With a hand that convulsed so that he could barely grip the sleeve of his robe, Lucius lifted the hem of his left sleeve. With only an inch of wrist bared, the clear black outline of the Dark Mark stood out boldly against his pale skin, but Lucius revealed the entire scar in the vain hope that he was somehow mistaken, for if the Dark Lord were back…

"Lucius—" Narcissa stared, transfixed at the skull and snake emblazoned on her husband's arm.

"I must go." He slipped the sleeve back in place, taking a moment to straighten his hair and robes.

"But Lucius, how can you be sure—" she began, but he cut her off immediately.

"It could be no one else," he hissed. "It seems that your mad sister was right."

The irony hit him then, and Lucius turned back to his wife in a long moment of true tenderness. Despite his callous ways, he did value his wife, and treasured her as a faithful and accepting companion. There was a comfort between them, born of sharing a home and bed for decades and of sharing the joy of Draco, though he would never have said he loved her. He brushed her cheek with the back of one hand, as was his custom, but there was a truth behind it that seldom glowed from his eyes the way it did now. The look frightened Narcissa, told her his true fears, the real danger that might await him at the side of their old master. Slowly, he brought his other hand up to balance her face between his hands as he lowered his lips slowly to hers. His kiss was heated and passionate as he drew her close to his body, but brief. There was a desperation behind it that frightened them both; a desperation that spoke plainly of their fear it might be their last embrace.

Lucius went to his master, frightened to his very core at what terrible punishments would be rained upon him for his apparent lack of loyalty. Indeed, for several long months after the Dark Lord's disappearance and their subsequent desertion, Lucius and Narcissa had looked over their shoulders everywhere they went, had combed the Daily Prophet and old connections for any hint that he had survived. After a few years of silence from all the old channels, they had slowly regained a sense of security and the grip of paranoia loosed from them both. The Malfoys had resumed their daily routine, grateful to be one of the few Dark families that had escaped any of the negative effects that had occurred in so many other households accused of allegiance to the Dark Lord. In public, they called him You-Know-Who and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. In the privacy of their home, he was given more fearful deference as the Dark Lord, spoken in hushed tones, or more often, not at all.

In the darkened graveyard that night, Lucius saw ancient dark magic more terrifying than anything he had witnessed during his days as a soldier in the Dark Lord's first reign. It chilled him to the bone to see what could be done to bring such an evil back to full form, and to see how far a man could go to fight death. He wondered briefly how much perseverance, power, and insanity had played a part in the Dark Lord's ability to regenerate a body from almost nothing. Knowing that such a thought could get him killed in an instant, he quickly buried it beneath the unpracticed layer of Occlumency, praying that it would be strong enough.

After Harry Potter's miraculous and unforeseeable getaway, the Dark Lord's wrath was inescapable. Without the boy dead, he stood witness to the return of the Dark Lord, something he had clearly not planned upon. The ancient magic he had used to build himself a body was unstable, and the corporeal form needed time to develop before being a safe haven for the Dark Lord. It had fallen to Lucius, whose remaining influence with the Minister of Magic was his only asset still useful to the Dark Lord, to ensure that the Potter boy's testimony to Lord Voldemort's return was treated as lies from an unstable child. As further punishment, it was decided that an appropriate repayment for the Malfoys' abandonment of their lord would be for their estate to serve as a sanctuary until the newly formed body was able to adequately protect its host.

When Lucius passed the information on to Narcissa, plans were immediately made for Draco to spend the summer with old friends in the deep heart of Africa, under the guise of learning advanced Dark magic from an old shaman. Although their son had been promised to serve the will of the Dark Lord from the day of his birth, Narcissa and Lucius could not bear the thought of Draco being presented during such a fragile time in the Dark Lord's return to power. When he was so frustrated with weakness that he would never admit, the Dark Lord's temper was at its most deadly peak, and introducing Draco at this point would surely prove dangerous. Knowing that they would have to accept the punishment for his protection, Draco was whisked away to safety, with strict instructions not to contact his parents, friends, or family.

~%%~

**A/N**: As I said, I'm not terribly happy with this chapter, but I feel I've gotten it as good as I can, and regardless, it has served its purpose. Also, this chapter marks my first major departure from canon, as Voldemort's residence at Malfoy Manor didn't actually begin until sometime between Y5 and Y6.

Thanks to all my reviewers from the last chapter, and to everyone who didn't review but still sat patiently waiting for the update email!

Rock on, keep reading, and as always, review!

cj596


	6. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Harry Potter or his world. I just play with them sometimes, but I always put them back where I found them.

**A/N:** In short: I'm so sorry, Glee, Klaine, and all things Darren Criss have been distracting me for weeks. If you're a Gleek like I am, feel free to check out my Klaine fic, titled "Fix Me," posted now. I'm getting more into my HP fics again, if the double-post didn't clue you in!

You're getting two chapters at once here, because this is a bit of a filler, but it's important enough character development (mainly for Draco) that I wanted it to be its own separate chapter. It's very wordy, and more narrative than dialogue, but that's because this point in Draco's life is spent in a lot of inwardly directed contemplation and eventual growth.

~%%~

_Even if a snake is not poisonous, it should pretend to be venomous._

—Chanakya, Indian Politician and Strategist, 350-275BC

Draco spent the summer in Africa as instructed, though the only shaman was at least six hundred years old, Draco judged from the condition of his withered frame, so there was hardly anything exciting to do or learn. Instead, he spent most of the days inside a stinking leather tent in a vain attempt to get away from the stifling heat. The tribesmen were all Muggles, and especially primitive ones at that, so the old wizard refused to use any magic that would throw off their sense of the world. This meant nothing to alter the climate, nor the size of his accommodations, and because Draco was still underage, there was nothing he could do to take matters into his own hands.

The only piece of real magic Draco had seen was when a particularly nasty lightening storm had threatened the herds of wild sheep that constantly milled around the village. The old man had done a ritual dance with the warrior men of the tribe. One of the Muggle women in the village told Draco in what little English she spoke that they were frightening away the storm with a show of their strength and might. It worked, and the storm seemed to part and go around the little village, but he suspected that it had more to do with the knarled twig in the old wizard's hand than it had to do with the painted men driving off nature itself.

He did not get the Daily Prophet, and so did not know how difficult life had become for Harry Potter, nor by extension, for the Weasleys who had so readily adopted him. He spent much of his time wondering what Ginevra was doing at any given moment, imagining her playing Quidditch with her brothers or cooking in the kitchen with her mother. It was something his own mother had not done until Dobby had left them, but he supposed that Ginevra, having grown up without hired help, was probably very adept at such things.

He had no idea that she was currently living with most of the Order of the Phoenix, nor that she was helping to prepare the headquarters of the resistance to Voldemort's growing army. He did not know that Ginny, who had had a crush on Harry for years, was beginning to realize that Harry was just a friend, and growing more like a brother with each passing day. Nor was Draco aware that she fell asleep at least twice a week with his face in the forefront of her mind, wondering how different, how much more enjoyable his summer in Malfoy Manor must be.

In fact, however, Draco did not return to Malfoy Manor at all that summer. Not only had he been picked up from King's Cross by "an associate of your father's" and taken directly to his Floo to Africa, but he was unceremoniously visited in his fire pit one night by the same wizard to announce that he would be travelling directly to King's Cross the next morning.

Time in the desert passed oddly, he had noticed. Some days seemed to drag on forever, years passing before the scorching sun would move a fraction of its endless path across the sky. On other days, he would go out to hunt with the men in the morning and quickly find them making camp for the night in the middle of the wilderness.

Draco was surprised to learn that it was already the end of August, but he supposed that the summer months had had to pass eventually. He hadn't minded so much being there, though. He supposed it had been very difficult, learning how to fend for himself without magic or servants, and he had sported a nasty sunburn for the first few weeks. But in the end, he had to admit that there was something incredibly satisfying about learning to hunt and kill with his bare hands, bringing the meat back to the village for everyone. For the first time in his life, he had managed his own personal needs. He had beaten laundry on rocks with the women, and tanned hides, sheered the flocks, and been accepted as a part of their people. Being a part of that kind of impossible survival was a rush that he could only associate with—he couldn't even think it. It made him feel worthy of Ginevra. As if _she_ was the superior of the two. Honestly, what was he thinking?

The strangest part of all of it, astoundingly enough, was not the cryptic letter from his mother that had started it all; it was not that the shaman he had been sent to had been more interested in beating his privileged background out of him than teaching him any magic; it hadn't even been that he'd managed to enjoy himself a bit.

It had been when the man turned to him just before they crossed the barrier into Platform Nine and Three-Quarters and whispered, "Remember, Young Malfoy: I am a family servant. You are not to address me as anything else. Tell them that your parents are away on business, or that you don't need them to see you off, or whatever else you want them to believe. But make up stories about your summer at home. We have arranged it so that you appeared in several different places around London this summer, so don't be too specific. Just make sure that no one questions that you were at home, in Malfoy Manor, and nothing is wrong."

He slipped a thick envelope into his hands and added, "You've been made a Prefect. Their carriage is up front, the badge in the envelope. You new books and equipment are in the trunk already."

_And nothing is wrong_.

That statement was _so_ wrong, Draco thought, as they crossed the barrier and he curtly instructed the man to take his trunk to the Prefects' carriage. If nothing else, how had his parents managed it so that his Hogwarts letter arrived at home, and not in Africa, where he had been staying? And perhaps more importantly…why? What had frightened them so much that they wouldn't even write to their own son and tell him? The worst part was that he knew he couldn't ask them outright. If it had been safe to do so, they would have already told him what in Merlin's name was going on at home.

The noise on the platform was deafening. He had spent the summer hearing nothing more than gentle chatter and the sounds of nature, the occasional warrior's cry tearing from his throat. The din of so many people in so small a space left his ears ringing unpleasantly, and he felt disoriented in the familiar place. He was relieved to follow the man—whose name he still did not know—into the relative quiet of the train, though there were still plenty of chatting students there. As they moved toward the front of the train, they encountered Potter and his Weasel boarding the train from a different door. Granger was explaining in an apologetic tone that they had to go to the front of the train to the Prefects' carriage. He expected to the see the Weasel's typical look of abandonment, but was surprised to find Potter's expression falter.

"Er, right," he heard him say with false enthusiasm. "That's alright, you two go on then."

So Potter had not been made a Prefect with the rest of them? It was an interesting bit of information, indeed, but one that lost a bit of its charm when he heard an oh-so-familiar voice saying, "You can sit with us, if you'd like, Harry. Neville and I have a compartment just up the way a bit. We've saved seats for Ron and Hermione, as well, for when they're done with their Prefect duties."

Though he had thought of her during almost every frigid African night, Draco had not been prepared to actually see Ginevra. She looked even paler than when he had seen her last, as though she had barely seen the outdoors that summer, and a bit thinner than he liked to see on her. But what really sent him into a downward spiral of self-loathing and arousal was how poorly her clothes fit her.

Her jeans were rolled up at the ankle and had awkwardly wide legs, sure signs that they were hand-me-downs from her brothers. Despite the excess fabric between her ankles and knees, he could see that as his eyes traveled upward, the denim tightened into a poorer fit. Her hips swayed ever so slightly, and unlike Pansy's grotesque jutting of the hip, it was obvious to Draco that the way Ginevra walked was the direct result of her not yet having noticed the subtle curve of hip that had forced the pockets of her pants to wrinkle and stretch sideways. It was also painfully obvious that the shirt she was wearing had been purchased long ago, when it had still fit, because as she strained to drag her worn trunk down the narrow corridor, it pulled taut across her chest and he was privy to every delicious curve of her torso, hidden from him by only a thin layer of bright blue cotton. Even worse, that cotton slipped up her skin with every alternate step, offering several centimeters of pale flesh for his eyes to feast upon.

A dismissive sneer was the best Draco could manage to toss at Potter as they moved past each other. The manservant was ahead of him, and Weasley and Granger were headed in the other direction, so Draco hesitated for half a second, not letting himself think about it and nodded politely to her. He was very impressed with himself for keeping his eyes above her collar bone, and added an acknowledging, "Ginevra."

The look on her face would have been priceless if he could have savored it for any length of time. As it was, he resisted the urge to look back, where he could nearly feel her eyes boring into the back of his skull, looking for an explanation for his odd behavior.

The thing was, he realized, it didn't seem like such odd behavior to him. They were just humans, a witch and a wizard, and caring for one another, despite all obstacles and rationality to the contrary would just make them another pair in a long line of lovers fighting against the outside world. He liked the girl, he had to admit as much to himself. What did it really matter if she knew? How terrible would it be, really, if she happened to like him, too?

As soon as he neared the Prefects' carriage, he remembered just how terrible it would be.

"—didn't have to _buy_ our Prefects' badges."

"Of course not. _You_ couldn't afford it!"

Draco recognized Pansy's high-pitched angry voice, and the pleasant demeanor that he had built over the summer, away from the bickering of the rest of the world, collapsed around his feet. Who he had been for his entire life fell back into place, and he found, suddenly, that it was a much less comforting feeling than one might have expected.

He had been away from this sense of home and self for so long that it now felt foreign to be standing in his tailored robes, preparing to step into the position of the favorite of Slytherin. He didn't even know the people who waited beyond the sliding doors, and if he were completely honest with himself, he really didn't want to.

~%%~

Draco spent much of that year trying to regain the sense of calm that he had found in Africa. He sought it somewhat in his studies, looking for new kinds of magic to replace the wonders he had seen in the wilderness. The natural order of lions hunting the weakest prey; flowers that somehow knew, without being magical, to open for the rain, and close tightly under the blistering sun; even the constant, primitive lifestyle of the Muggles he had stayed with held a certain majesty in his memory. He knew, of course, that not all Muggles lived such a primitive life, but he could not help but think that the Muggles he had been with had been far more civilized than much of the wizarding world ever was.

He was able to find some solace in the single-minded relentlessness of Jane Umbridge, and in his position on the Inquisitorial Squad. He did not necessarily understand anymore why any of this was so necessary, but the ability to be a leader and fulfill a role he knew his father would approve of was a heady drug, and in rare moments it offered him a bit of clarity.

Not that the clarity was any comfort at all.

In those brief instances of illumination in his otherwise darkened and dulled mind, Draco saw the world, not as it was, but as perhaps it ought to become. Breaking into the stupid group of Potter's in the magic room on the seventh floor was a rush—and not just because it was an opportunity to grab Ginevra around the waist as she ran. His position on the squad kept him from having much contact with Ginevra that year, and Umbridge's insistence that all mail be searched made it impossible for him to send her a message warning her that they were closing in.

Perhaps if he had gone home that Christmas, or over the Easter holidays, Draco would have remembered why those lessons his father had taught him had ever seemed to desperately important. But he continued to be cut off from his own family, receiving no correspondence other than brief notes telling him of his parents' holiday trips and reminding him that he would be remaining at Hogwarts instead of joining them. As before, though, he had never heard of such trips, and was quite certain that every drop of ink from his mother's quill was a lie.

Mostly, he hunted for that sense of calm and peaceful being in the arms of the girls of Hogwarts. He became more attentive to them, taking the time to draw out their pleasure, making them beg for the gifts he had to give, though he never left them without that final, sweet release. He quickly accustomed himself to seeing hazel eyes on the face of any woman he had, and slowly but surely applied other attributes to their figures. Broad hips slimmed down, blonde hair brightened to fiery orange, and freckles appeared on rouged cheeks. Before long, every woman Draco had was just a shadow of Ginevra.

It became easier and easier to lie to Pansy and to encourage her belief in his unyielding adoration of her. One morning, however, she became a bit too uncomfortable with the number of girls claiming to have been bedded by the Slytherin favorite, and she confronted him when they were alone at the Slytherin table in the Great Hall.

A pair of girls had been whispering as they walked past he and Pansy on their way to class, and broke into a fit of naughty giggles when he tossed them a roguish wink over her head. The two girls had been his weekend treat to himself the night before in the common room. It had been especially satisfying because of how easily they could have been caught if anyone had wandered up from the dormitories in the middle of the night.

"What are they giggling about?" she asked sourly.

"I don't pretend to understand women," he lied easily, though he had worked very hard over the past year to do exactly that.

"I've heard an awful lot of girls whispering about you this year, darling," she said icily, keeping her voice low.

That she had called him 'darling' instead of her usual sickly-sweet nicknames had him paying rapt attention to her words, though he merely replied, "Have you? What on earth about?"

"They've been saying how…well, how _good_ you are," she replied, and it was clear that the subject was making her uncomfortable.

He raised an eyebrow delicately, hoping she would drop the subject entirely out of embarrassment, but of course he had finally pushed her too far for that to be an option.

"You _know_ what I mean, darling," she hissed. "I've been hearing all sorts of girls talking about your talents…_behind closed doors_." She whispered, trying to keep from being heard. Pansy just _hated_ for anyone to know they were having a spat, or any kind of trouble at all. "Not even just Slytherins. Girls all over the school. How on earth would they know that?"

"Pansy, love," he whispered, leaning down to her ear in a seductive way. "_You're_ the one who's been telling them all how good I am." He bit her earlobe gently in a way he knew she liked. "And _you're_ the one who knows."

She giggled a bit and flushed, glancing around in the hopes that someone had seen. But Draco had known before being so intimate with her that there were only a few students left in the Great Hall, and most of them were squeezing in a few more moments of homework before class.

"I know, darling, it's just—" He could tell by the way she stopped herself that he already had her doubting her suspicions. The ease of his lies astounded even himself, and he felt that familiar sickened feeling that had become the standard accompaniment to a lie.

"Look," he began, taking a risk on a piece of truth. "Even if you hear other girls talking about me," he held her chin gently in his hand and met her eyes, leaning close with an arm on the table, "just remember that _you_ are the one who gets me in the end. No matter what happens between now and the end of school, _you_ are going to be the Malfoy bride at the end of it." He nearly choked on the words, but he had had plenty of practice in admitting his inescapable future out loud to Pansy and hid his disgust with little effort.

It was a brilliant lie, he had to admit, in that it wasn't a lie at all. He had as much as told Pansy that she would hear others talk about him—thereby redeeming himself of any fault that it was occurring—but he had stopped just short of openly denouncing her implication that the other girls knew what they were talking about, which, in most cases, they did.

~%%~

**A/N**: Cyber cookies to anyone who can spot the slight deviation from canon!

Thanks to all my reviewers from the last chapter, and to everyone who didn't review but still sat patiently waiting for the update email!

Rock on, keep reading, and as always, review!

cj596


	7. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Harry Potter or his world. I just play with them sometimes, but I always put them back where I found them.

**A/N:** This is the chapter where I have to tell you all to **turn away if you are not fit and/or old enough to read materials of an adult nature.**

Everyone else…enjoy. I know I did!

~%%~

_And there appeared another wonder in Heaven;_

_and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads_

_and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads._

—Revelations 12:3

What had happened at the Ministry was draining, at best; the looming end of the world, at worst. The reality, Ginny suspected, was probably somewhere in the middle, like a nightmare come to life.

At the end of it, she supposed it was a good thing that the Dark Lord had been publically exposed, though she could not quell her fury at the Ministry, who had been given the information months before and _chosen_ to do nothing. It was impossible to deny, however, the costs of the failed rescue attempt. Two days after their rescue by Dumbledore, Ron and Hermione were still in the hospital wing recovering from their injuries, and Harry had barely begun to grieve for Sirius' death.

The Slytherins were already being treated as potential enemies by the rest of the school in light of the news that Harry had not, in fact, been lying about the Dark Lord's return. Shifty glances were sent, and they began circling the wagons, no longer calling attention to themselves or instigating disturbances in the hallways. Personally, Ginny suspected that they were just as frightened as the rest of the student body, and were probably waiting for their parents to explain everything when they got home.

So the letter she received their second morning back after the battle at the Ministry surprised her.

_Ginevra,_

_If you will, meet me in the Entrance Hall at midnight._

_Yours_

That was it. "Yours," it had been concluded, but no name had been penned beneath. It wasn't as though the sender was any great mystery, however. Not only did she recognize the handwriting, but he was the only person in the world who called her that.

She puzzled for hours over why he would send such a cryptic message, especially with the recent events at the Ministry. She knew his father had been arrested and taken to Azkaban to await trial, but she doubted that would be any reason to talk to her. And why in the middle of the night?

Ginny even wondered if this wasn't perhaps a ruse or trap of some kind, something designed to bring her alone into the open. Although he had never shown proof that she ought to distrust him, he was a Slytherin, and a Malfoy moreover; little good would ever come of him, sad though it made her to admit it. It seemed inconceivable that he would be asking her for a spot of tea or pleasant chat, but the more she thought about it, the more she wanted to go and hear what he had to say.

In the end, she decided to go, but not expose herself until he did first. If he came alone to see her, she would go out to meet him; if there were others with him, or he did not arrive before a quarter past midnight, she would sneak quietly back up to her dormitory and go straight to bed.

~%%~

After a close call with Filch, a near run-in with Professor Flitwick—cleverly avoided by spidering her way up a particularly tall statue—and a two dead sprints to round a corner before being spotted, Ginny found herself breathless and already distempered at the top of the marble staircase. With all the interference, it had taken her a good deal longer to reach her destination than she had expected, and it was nearly five past midnight already.

The dim torchlight offered a decent view of the walls of the Entrance Hall, but the only real light came from the high windows on either side of the massive double doors.

As she watched, a dark figure—which she supposed, based on its slinking motion, had to be him—moved around the perimeter of the Entrance Hall to wait under the staircase. She lost sight of him when he moved beyond the opposite side of the banister, but he worked his way toward the base of the marble staircase, where he waited in a half-crouched position that seemed to mirror her own.

Without another thought, Ginny stood straight and stepped out of the limited shelter offered by the ornate carved marble of the banister. It occurred to her a moment too late, to wonder how she would get his attention, but no matter.

Draco had been staring at the top of the first level, eyes flicking from right to left, and trying to feel less like a school girl as he wondered from which side she would appear. When she stepped out, still wearing her school clothes, sans the robes, he felt suddenly over-dressed. In preparation to sneak out in the middle of the night, he had worn black from head to toe. He didn't have time, at this point, to go and change, so he did the only really reasonable thing left to him in such circumstances.

Ginny watched as the blackened figure rose to his full height, and his pale face seemed to shine amidst the darkness around them. The sight of him, standing so suavely at the bottom of the stairs, did funny things inside her stomach. A warmth curled its way from her gut to her face, where she couldn't stop the smile from escaping.

He smirked back, and even though it was the same thing that had irked her for so many years, now it just seemed adorable.

Unfortunately, not everyone seemed to agree.

"_Draco Malfoy!_" The shrill, angry voice of Professor McGonagall pulled Ginny's mind sharply into focus, and Ginny dropped sharply back to her crouch, hugging her knees and trying to be as small and invisible as she could manage. The marble floor and high stone ceiling of the Entrance Hall made it difficult to tell where the ringing echo came from, until the angry woman appeared around the other side of the staircase, meters from where Malfoy now stood.

His face lost the happiness at once, replaced by shock, and then quickly by another smirk, which, Ginny realized suddenly, was a completely different smirk from the one she had just seen.

She contemplated running for it, but he would surely tell on her anyway. She knew she could make it back up to bed before McGonagall could get there to check, but she would have to run full out, and she was already exhausted from her first trip. All she could do now was wait and hope that he wouldn't rat on her.

~%%~

Ginny was in a truly foul mood the following evening when she made her way down the marble staircase before the Leaving Feast.

Though she had indeed promised herself that she would only wait for Malfoy until quarter past midnight, she had crouched behind the banister of the marble staircase until nearly one o' clock.

Professor McGonagall had been livid. After the events at the Ministry, Ginny had been right to think that the security inside the castle would have been upped. The fact that the person caught was the son of one of the arrested Death Eaters had done nothing to suggest Malfoy's innocence.

They had stood there, Malfoy being thoroughly reprimanded and grilled as to why he was standing the in Entrance Hall at midnight for nearly twenty minutes. Ginny had been too frightened to move during that time, just in case her dash for Gryffindor Tower should alert McGonagall to her presence. Her crouched position had been uncomfortable almost as soon as she assumed it, and by the time Malfoy had been led away by the scowling professor to be given his punishment, her legs were both numb and burning.

At the same time, however, it could certainly have been worse. Malfoy could have easily thrown Ginny under the broom by outing her position at the top of the stairs, and he had remained silent.

More than silent, if she was being fair. When McGonagall had brought Malfoy to the top of the staircase to bring him to her office, he had thrown a small tantrum that had McGonagall dragging him by the ear up the stairs opposite Ginny's position. She didn't realize it until after the fact, but his pointless little tantrum had been what kept McGonagall's attention away from Ginny's spot until they had already passed her by.

So when she had received another letter from a nondescript barn owl in that familiar handwriting, asking to meet in a more secluded location just before the Leaving Feast that night, she was less angry than she was surprised.

Which brought her to the present moment.

Standing in the broom cupboard in the Entrance Hall, just prior to the Leaving Feast.

By herself.

It did nothing for her poor mood that he had not shown up yet. It did even less for her mood that she was forced to recognize disappointment building in her chest with every passing second. She should not be _disappointed_ by the likes of Malfoy.

Much later, it occurred to Ginny that she should have felt some kind of nervousness that he hadn't shown up. She should have realized that maybe he was setting her up for trouble, or some kind of humiliating prank. In the moment, however, all she could think was that a boy had stood her up, and that she wanted him to be there with her.

The stripe of light that flashed up the wall as the door opened just a crack nearly sent her into a seizure of fright. His pale, pointed face was readily visible in the seconds it took him to slip in and close the door behind him, throwing them back into the extreme darkness.

"_Lumos_," she heard him whisper, and thought vaguely that she ought to have had the sense to do the same while waiting.

The light seemed harsh in so small a space, and Ginny was convinced that it made his features seem somehow more angular, his gaze a bit more fearsome.

"You came," he said quietly. Draco could have smacked himself for such a shamelessly inane statement, but he could feel the tension uncoiling in his chest, now that he knew should had come to him.

"Obviously." She crossed her arms and rolled her eyes, as though by reflex.

Draco wasn't sure what to say to _that_, either, and he settled once again for something obvious and stupid. "I'm glad."

"Why am I here?" she asked tiredly.

"I just want you to know that I feel what my father and the others did in the Ministry was wrong," he said quickly, needing to get the traitorous words out before he lost his nerve.

Her mouth gaped soundlessly for several moments, dropping her arms back to her sides, and he took that as a sign that his sentiment had not been well received. When she finally spoke, it was in a hushed tone that suggested she would have been screeching at him were they anywhere else at any other time. "That's why you dragged me all the way down here in the middle of the night, stood me up, and made me late for the Leaving Feast? To tell me that you think your _Death Eater father_ was wrong when he laid _siege_ to the _Ministry of Magic_ and helped _You-Know-Who_ try to kill my brother and his friends?"

He forced himself to breathe deeply, instead of strangling the stubborn child. He had known that she would not understand what he was trying to say. "Please, listen to me." He supposed, after the fact, that it was hearing him say please that had kept her from storming out of the cupboard.

"Fine. What?" she snapped.

"Only once in my life have I admitted even to myself that my father is not a perfect man," he said clearly. "And only once in my life have I ever admitted out loud to someone else that he had made the wrong choice."

"I'm so thrilled that you've chosen me to come out to," she spat acidly.

He reached out as though to grab her face, and for one second, Ginny thought he was going to choke her or kiss her. She wasn't sure which would be more frightening—or exhilarating—but he ceased the motion before she could find out. She watched in fascination as he dug his fingers into the palms of his hands, gritting his teeth in apparent frustration with her. "Ginevra, why do you have to be such a bitch when I'm just trying to tell you I'm sorry for what he did?"

"And why do you always have to be such a pompous bastard?"

"You don't understand—"

"I understand everything I will ever need to know about you, Malfoy," she shot at him, inching closer to his face with every passing second. "You are nothing more than the sniveling, spoiled son of an arrogant, evil wizard. I'm sure you're just _thrilled_ that You-Know-Who's been restored, so you can run off and join the Death Eaters with your father—"

"You have no idea what you're sa—" But she would not pause for his interruption, raising her voice to drown out his words.

"—and kill and maim and destroy lives for your stupid vendetta against anything that's not as bloody pure as you are! And let me tell you something else, Draco _bloody_ Malfoy. You waltz around this castle like Merlin's gift to women everywhere, and all you are is a strumpet of a man, fucking whomever you want and leaving their hearts in the dust! You're just throwing your life away like all the rest of them, and—"

"Ginevra, shut u—"

She was nearly shouting now. "—and if you get killed by an Auror, don't expect me to feel sorry for you, just because it's taken you so long to figure out that your father's an evil, lying bastard!"

Without warning, he shoved her away from him, slamming her into the opposite wall. She wasn't sure what surprised her more, that he had not merely thrown her, but gone with her and was now pinning her to the wall, or the fact that she really didn't mind in the slightest. Her back was a bit sore from the impact, but having him glowering down at her had its own sort of secret, naughty thrill. It was nice to know that there was in fact a way to get under Malfoy's skin.

She watched in a mixture of curiosity and fear as rage crept through his features. His teeth were bared as he breathed heavily and his eyebrows were scrunched together, marring his usually smooth face. He certainly looked like he was trying to decide whether or not to hex her into little bits.

"What do you want from me, Malfoy?" she whispered. "Why did you write me again after so long? Why were you even writing to me before, in my first year? What do you want from me?"

"The same thing I always have, Ginevra."

"And what's that?"

So slowly that she wasn't even sure he was moving at first, Malfoy bent his head down over hers. When his lips made contact, she knew at once that she should push him away, slap him and curse him and run to the feast as fast as she could. But somehow, that just didn't sound like such a good plan right at the moment. It seemed like a rather better idea to continue standing there, letting Malfoy kiss her, because really, his lips were quite soft, and his hair smelled of some nice-smelling product, and the cool hands that were still wrapped around her upper arms had long, thin fingers that could do quite amazing things, if gossip was to be believed…

He pulled away just as slowly as he had moved in, his eyes never leaving hers as they fluttered open. He lifted his hands, palms toward her in a _don't attack_ sort of motion.

"Why did you stop?" she whispered breathlessly.

"I thought you wanted me to," was his surprising reply. "You were just standing there. You might think I'm a smarmy git, but I'm not that bad. If a girl doesn't respond, I tend to back off." He didn't mention that she was the only girl he'd ever known who didn't swoon at his very gaze, nor that it only made him want to try harder.

"Wasn't I?" she asked dreamily. "I had thought I was. You must be as good as they say. No one's ever made it so difficult to think before."

It was proof of her state of mind that she had even said that aloud, and there was a small part of her that acknowledged she probably oughtn't to have said that to Malfoy, whose ego was certainly big enough without adding a _Gryffindor_ to his resume. Then again, he wouldn't be any more able to tell his house about their goings on than she could tell hers, so perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing, after all.

He looked at her curiously, wondering who "they" were. He took a sick sort of pride in knowing that he was a better kisser, in that one peck, than she had ever experienced. It could certainly be interesting to see how far he could push her before she turned into a quivering mess of desire, but he wasn't sure which of them would break first, and that wasn't a battle he was willing to lose, just yet. He quirked an eyebrow at her as he realized the implication of her words. "As good at what?"

"Everything," she whispered dreamily.

His confidence returning, Draco eased closer to her again. He pressed the length of his body against hers, so that she had to tilt her head to see his face. He allowed the proof of her effect on him to rest casually against her hip, and the slight widening of her eyes told him that it had not been lost on her.

"Ginevra," he whispered, injecting just enough sex into his voice to enjoy the resultant hitch in her breath. "You haven't even begun to see the kinds of everything I could do to you. I'm sure you've heard things from other girls, but trust me—" His lips caressed her ear as he spoke. "I would do things to you that would make any other man look like a boy beside me. Your entire being would scream for me every time I walked past. You will never be able to be with another man without remembering how much better it was—" He paused dramatically to make sure she was listening, and positioned himself to whisper directly into her ear, "—with me."

Ginny's knees were literally shaking as he dropped word after word of pure, unadulterated sex into her ear. The nasally sneering tone that was so definitively Draco Malfoy was gone, and she was forcefully reminded of how she had once thought him a gentle boy, that first day at King's Cross. His voice was husky and low, and filled with searing heat. She supposed that was where his warmth had gone; manipulated into heated sex, the only human piece left of him. Thinking of the human sex piece of him was doing nothing for her mental prowess, so she said nothing.

"You want me," he muttered. She could feel something hot and wet tracing patterns on her neck and moaned at an embarrassing volume when she realized it was his tongue. Draco Malfoy's _tongue_ was on her skin. "You want me so badly you can't even think straight, can you?"

Ginny's combative nature poked through the haze Malfoy was creating enough to recognize a challenge. "I do _not_ want you," she hissed, though she knew it was categorically untrue.

"Now, now Ginevra," he breathed, his hands shifting higher on her torso so that they were just barely touching the sides of her breasts. She wiggled as subtly as she could manage, trying for more contact. "Didn't anyone ever tell you it's rude to lie? I won't tell anyone if you won't."

"Of course you will," she replied as venomously as she could manage. Her fingers were scraping against the wall to her back in an effort not to touch him. "You're a cad. You'll tell everyone you know how you sacked Ron Weasley's little sister."

He laughed throatily, and it was like a caress between her legs. "You think I'm in here with you because of your _brother_? Ginevra, I had no idea your opinion of me was so low."

Just as she was preparing another blazing and brilliant retort, his tongue came back into the events, crawling at a painfully slow pace along the relatively low-cut top of her blouse. She had worn the slightly dressier version of her school uniform for the feast, and was not sure if she regretted it or not. The placement of his tongue along her collarbone made her ache in other places for the wet heat of that organ. She could feel the dampness collecting in her knickers at an alarming rate, and she could not stop wondering how he would feel, sliding along that path. She shuddered, knowing she would never rid herself of that delicious, naughty image.

"I'll make you a deal, Ginevra," he offered, lifting his head from her chest. "I'm willing to bet that you are so wet you can hardly stand it right now." She scowled up at him, and he chuckled darkly. "Let's not make faces. This is a good thing for you, my little lion cub." His head tilted down so that he was looking her in the eye and his breath floated deliciously across her cheek as he spoke. "If you go to the Leaving Feast tonight and spend the whole time laughing with your friends and wondering what your mum is making for dinner when you get home tomorrow night, I won't bother you again. You just trot on up to Gryffindor House and fall asleep with nary a thought for me.

"But, if you spend all of dinner thinking about this broom cupboard and all the wonderful things that might happen in the dark here," and at his words, his hands came to life again, moving across her front so that he barely touched her breasts through her top. The almost silent gasp she let out was torturous to the parts of Draco that were encouraging him to rip her clothes off right there. But he had to give her a chance to walk away, because he knew now that he wasn't strong enough to be the one to say no. "Then you meet me back here at midnight, Ginevra. I'll do things to you that Dean Thomas and Michael Corner and Harry bloody Potter couldn't even see in their wet dreams."

He trailed the palm of his hands down across the slight curve of her hips, dragging his fingers back up the front of her jeans, never quite touching where he knew she so desperately wanted him. Her legs gave out in one wracking shudder, and he reacted quickly enough to grab her by the waist, pulling her entire body flush against his front, grinding his painfully tight erection into her backside. His hands ran through the seam of her thighs, touching her most intimate parts roughly through her pants.

The noises coming from her were pure evil, an Imperious Curse in the form of the most desirable thing he had ever known. He would have done anything for her right then, anything she asked. Luckily, he had made her completely mute with need. "And then when I'm finished with you, you can pick up the pieces of your bloody Gryffindor pride and go home for the summer, wondering how you can get more next year."

"You're a royal fuck, you know that?"

"Perhaps," he replied smugly. "But it's fitting, as I'll be the best fuck you've ever had."

~%%~

It turned out to be quite easy for Ginny to sneak down to the Entrance Hall. Since returning from the Ministry, she and the others who had been there for the Dark Lord's return from hiding had not been questioned much in their motions around the castle, especially with her brother still in the hospital wing. By going to visit he and Hermione immediately after the feast with Harry, she was able to stay out of Gryffindor Tower past hours. Harry had tried to be gentlemanly and stay as late as she wanted to, so as to escort her back, but she had insisted that she would probably spend the night there. He had finally taken the hint that she wanted to be alone with her brother, and she suspected that he thought she was blaming him for Ron's injuries.

She didn't want him to feel badly, but she certainly couldn't tell him why she needed to stay in the hospital wing so late; that it would be easier to sneak down to the Entrance Hall from the second floor than from the seventh, and she would therefore be less likely to be caught while sneaking down to meet Malfoy for what would hopefully be the shag of her life. There was no way he would ever allow her to go, she knew. And even if he didn't try to stop her, Harry would never see her in the same way again. She suspected that no one outside of her partners knew that she was not exactly virginal, but as the youngest of a clan of men, it seemed to be the accepted standard that she would remain pure until they approved of a man. This particular man had no chance, if that were the case.

_Then again_, she reminded herself, _no one needs to approve, since this will only happen this once_. It was the mantra she repeated to herself as she watched Madam Pomfrey settle down in her office and turn out the lamp for the night. _Enjoy it tonight. Just this once_. She slipped through the door as quickly as she could, leaving only the barest of _clicks_ as the door latched shut.

_Just this once_.

The corridors were silent and still. The shock of what had progressed at the Ministry had done what no amount of rules or history or magic could do to the students of Hogwarts, and no one roamed the corridors that night, for fear of what might find them there.

_Just this once._

Of course, sneaking off to meet the son of one of the Dark Lord's inner circle left Ginny feeling little fear. After all, if there were anything roaming the corridors that might cause her harm, Malfoy Sr. would have certainly instructed his son to stay well out of the way. She wondered, briefly, if Malfoy was setting some kind of trap for her, but had to remember that she was unimportant. If anyone might have been in danger this night, it would have been Harry, or perhaps Ron and Hermione, lying vulnerable and alone in the infirmary. Which was not to say that she was not in any danger at all…it just seemed that the dangerous acts she was about to participate in were unlikely to end in her own death or extreme injury, or even in anything unpleasant.

_Just this once._

The Entrance Hall was just as empty as the rest of the castle, though she heard a small noise of motion and pressed against the wall, fearful that it was Mrs. Norris or one of the professors. The cavernous room echoed with the sound so that she could not tell where it had come from. Then, from the stone archway that led down to Snape's dungeons—and, she suddenly realized, probably the Slytherin House as well—stepped Malfoy.

Draco was only about sixty-two percent sure that there wasn't going to be an angry Potter or Weasley waiting for him in the broom cupboard instead of an aching, wanting Ginevra. He hesitated in the cove of the staircase for a moment before stepping quickly into the dimly lit Entrance Hall proper, unwilling to repeat the catastrophe of the night before by taking his time. He knew that there was likely to be double or triple the security in the castle since the open return of the Dark Lord, but if the Second War had begun, this would be his last chance to secure one night of pleasure with his fiery obsession, and even McGonagall's ill-timed appearance the night before had not been reason enough to deter him. Hoping this was going to be worth the risk of a severe beating should her family ever discover what he was about to do, Draco walked purposefully toward the door nearest the Arithmancy classroom and slipped inside.

It was completely dark, and he couldn't see anything. But he could _hear_ her. Her breathing, the slight rustle of clothing as she moved from her waiting position against the wall. And he could _smell_ her, a slight floral breeze that wafted in the stuffy air around them.

For several moments, they stood there, listening to the sound of their own ragged, desperate breathing. Neither was sure what to do, and while that was fairly par for the course for Ginny when it came to Malfoy, Draco felt like he was drowning in his own bathtub, lost in a world he should already know. Yet somehow, Ginevra managed to sap him of any rational thought, and bring him back to the mindset of a silly, frightened fifteen-year-old boy.

"You came," she whispered, echoing his words from earlier.

"Obviously."

Unable to stand the tension any longer, Ginny lunged at him, and he seemed to have done the same, because they met violently in the middle of the closet, knocking over a box of blackboard erasers and ignoring it entirely, because their lips met. It was raw, and passionate, and anything but gentle. His teeth sliced across her lips in a deliciously painful way, and his tongue was wild, rabid, pulling her in as though he wanted to devour her entirely. Malfoy had been right, she thought to herself. It was like nothing she had ever felt with another boy.

"I don't like you," she clarified between kisses as he struggled to remove her shirt while she was opening the buttons on his. "I don't even think you're worthy of my time." Her shirt landed on the floor at his feet as he finally relieved her of it, and when he could not hold her body tight to his and unclasp her bra at the same time, he grasped the front and tore the offending garment from her body.

"You repulse me," he agreed enthusiastically, taking her nipple into his mouth and using his free hand to unfasten his pants. Her exquisite moans filled the heated air around them. 

"And I don't want you to think," she whispered as he hiked up her skirt and pulled down her cotton knickers, "that this means I love you or anything. I'm not even giving you my virginity."

"Of course you're not," he muttered, touching her gently and finding her more than ready for him. "Whore."

"Prick." He slipped between her legs, hooking them over his hips, and teased her entrance with his tip, as though to illustrate her point.

"Blood traitor." He thrust inside her, his back bowing at the effort it took not to come inside of her right then and there. He held still for a moment, reveling in the heat, the tightness, the wonderful sounds coming out of her mouth while he regained control.

"Sneaking—" He thrusted, and she moaned in response, the pleasure interrupting her words. "Slimy—" Thrust and moan. "Evil—" Hard thrust and…small scream—interesting. "Ferret!" She wrapped her legs around him, gripping the shelf above her head for the leverage to meet his motions, pressed against the wall as she was.

"Why do you always have to be such a bitch, Ginevra?" he whispered, digging the fingers of one hand deep into the flesh of her backside while the other wrapped her hair around one hand, pulling hard and forcing her head to meet his for a kiss. She responded by drawing his upper lip into her mouth and biting down hard. He thrust forcefully into her, hard enough to bruise her thighs and leave her sore for days. She let out another small scream, biting down on his shoulder to muffle the noise.

The struggle for power continued. When she arched her back in pleasure, he bit her nipples. She ran her fingers backward through his hair, completely mussing it. He bit across her neck and shoulders, certain it would leave marks. And her moaning never stopped. He pulled her hair again, jerking her head back as he slammed into her over and over again. When she came, calling his surname into the darkness, she dragged her fingernails across his back, clawing deep enough to break the skin.

The pain of her fingernails and the pleasure of her climax coursing around him combined with the finality of having given up his fight not to want her anymore, and it all proved enough to undo him. He wrenched her head down to his face again, kissing hard enough that their teeth clacked together painfully as he spilled his release inside her.

The violence and the passion of their act hung palpably in the air as they both caught their breath. Never moving from his position inside her, Draco rested his head in the valley between her soft breasts, his body still spasming from the force of the most incredible sex he'd ever experienced. Her chest heaved beneath him, and he could hear the fluttery pounding of her heart.

Her arms tentatively moved from the bar above her head to wrap around his shoulders and head, drawing him closer to her as the sweat and heavier fluids combined between their bodies. They shared the silence for several minutes as each tried to wrap their mind around the forbidden encounter. Ginny knew already that she couldn't tell anyone about this; the Gryffindors would turn on her in an instant, and anyone else would see her as just the newest addition to Malfoy's harem.

Draco leaned into the warm circle of her arms, fighting with his own body to breathe normally. He supposed that that was how sex with Pansy should be, the kind that was so all-consuming, it made him want to keep coming back for more. _Dangerous thoughts,_ he told himself. Once only, that had been the plan.

She shivered delicately as her overheated body began to cool, and he was brought back to the fact that they were entwined in a broom cupboard in the Entrance Hall, nearly naked and freshly fucked in the middle of the night.

Groaning slightly with the effort it took, Draco forced his stiff arms to release her hair and push himself away from the wall. It seemed much harder to lift her slight frame off of his body, unable to resist a final thrust before pulling out completely. She _hmmed_ gently and he watched, fascinated, as her eyes slipped closed. He set her down gently and stepped away in the small room to fasten his pants and pull his shirt back into place. He could hear the rustling fabric as she put herself back together as well, but could not bring himself to look at her.

"My bra!"

"What?"

"You tore through my bra!"

He didn't have a response to that, because, "You make me forget how a hook and clasp work, I wanted you so desperately I couldn't wait to figure it out," was _so_ not an option, and it was the only truth he had to offer her.

"Are you decent?" he asked instead before he opened the door, still not looking at her. It surprised him. That wasn't the kind of consideration he showed to girls he fucked.

"Yes, thank you," came the nearly silent response.

He opened the door, snatching his robes off the floor before leaving. He hadn't intended to look back at her, really. It was just that small sound of surprise she made that turned his head. It didn't matter that the motion had begun before she'd made a sound.

She was pointing at him, her other hand moving to delicately cover her mouth, framed in a small 'O' of surprise. The shape of her mouth brought forth dozens of other images that had him grating his teeth in frustration with his own treacherous body. This was supposed to fix such embarrassing urges around her.

"Your back," she whispered.

"What about it?" He hadn't meant to snap at her, but he needed to get away from her, away from the scent of them together that was still lingering in the air between them.

"I—I think it's bleeding. From where I—" She stopped, but he remembered vividly the sensation of her nails crawling across his skin.

He shrugged out of his dress shirt, noting with admiration that she did not look away from his body. It was what the other girls would have done, pretended that they didn't want him anymore, no matter how many times they came back to his bed. But she was unashamed that her body yearned for his and her eyes raked across his bare torso so intensely he was certain he could feel his skin burning. Sure enough, even in the dim torchlight he could clearly see streaks of blood criss-crossing his shirt back in telling stripes of four apiece. She had clawed his back open in her passion. He was suddenly aware of a stinging pain on the assaulted skin, and a shudder ran through his body. He hoped she mistook it for pain or disgust.

"I didn't mean to hurt you," she whispered at last, and he looked up into eyes filled with guilt. "I'm so sorry."

Draco weighed his words carefully before speaking, lest he share something he didn't mean to. After a long silence of looking into her eyes, he licked his lips and simply said, "I'm not, Ginevra."

He stepped forward and kissed her forehead in a much more brotherly fashion than he had thought he'd be able to pull off, and slipped a small flask into her hands before turning and heading down the stone steps to the Slytherin dungeons.

~%%~

**A/N**: So…angry sex. Yes? No? Worth the wait? I have a large chunk of next chapter written, and this Glee hiatus is forcing me to return to the world of Harry Potter, so don't think I've forgotten you guys!

Thanks to all my reviewers from the last chapter, and to everyone who didn't review but still sat patiently waiting for the update email!

Rock on, keep reading, and as always, review!

cj596


	8. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Harry Potter or his world. I just play with them sometimes, but I always put them back where I found them.

**A/N:** So. Hi. Long time, no see. I'm a big girl now, and apparently that means I don't have time to write anymore. These fics have not been abandoned, but having time to work on them just doesn't happen much these days. Brother to Dragons and One Kiss From You will be finished eventually. I simply can't guarantee a time frame for each chapter. I'm hoping that things in my life will settle down considerably in coming months, and that I'll then be able to set up a more regular posting schedule. But don't get too excited; that may still only mean a chapter per month, rather than one per year. Just stick with me, and I promise the wait will be worth it.

So there is smut in this chapter. And I need to distinguish: One Kiss From You, the companion piece, will have lemony moments. This chapter **contains straight-up smut**. Ginny and Draco's relationship is darker in nature than Harry and Hermione's, and I believe both of the characters are themselves more carnal, as well. This story reflects that, so I want you to be prepared for a distinctly different flavor here.

Chapter dedicated to **brianaangel**, **MagicMariah**, and **Neca**! This picks up immediately after the previous chapter. I suggest a quick re-read if you're feeling left behind.

~% %~

_Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the __Lord__ God had made. And he said unto the woman, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?_

_-Genesis 3:1_

Once back in the Slytherin common room, Draco fell onto one of the many plush sofas, swearing silently to himself. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have been so careless, so unaware? To be caught with Ginevra in the broom closet would have meant expulsion, most likely, and worse, being outed to his father and the Dark Lord as a blood traitor, just as bad as the rest of the Weasleys. He hadn't meant to do that.

Not entirely true.

He had had every intention of shagging the bright-haired Gryffindor in that broom cupboard that evening. He just hadn't meant for it to be the most passionate, intense fuck he'd ever had. And he was fairly certain that she had never had it as good, either.

He throbbed, half-hard again, with the sensory memory of her, wrapped so tightly around him. Nothing with Pansy had ever had such an incendiary effect on his entire being. She was willing to please him, certainly, and often went to his bed only for that. She enjoyed his ministrations, but believed that her place in his bed was to be there for his pleasure and nothing else. Yet, she rarely took part in anything he did to her. She would move without comment between positions and never make a noise, except to tell him to come inside her. He always did, and he always watched her swallow the light blue potion afterward. He was nearly certain that Pansy had been a virgin their first time in fourth year, but she had never felt so tight and wet around his—

_No_.

Mustn't sully the night's events with thoughts of his repugnant betrothed. This was the only opportunity he would grant himself to have Ginevra's tender flesh, and he wanted to savor every scrap of the memory, even as it burned through his mind. He would allow himself to commit this flame to memory, and only in the loneliest of his days would he hold himself against it, as to a candle in the wind. His mind traced leisurely back through their heated encounter.

The delectable shape of her mouth, open in surprise as she saw the damage to his back. How he longed to feel those lips wrapped around him, her eyes widened in surprise as he spilled—

_Stop it._

The glistening sheen of sweat across her face and chest, cool against his face as he rested in her bosoms. If only he could have rested a bit longer, nuzzling his face in her delicate frame, falling asleep safely in her—

_You have to stop._

Her nails digging fiercely through his flesh, drawing blood as he wrenched the pleasure from that sweet haven between her legs. The burning passion, raw between them. The violence of their act, the desperate rush to be made as one. The moment of silence, before the passion, when they gave in together. The moment when she broke him.

But even earlier in that same night, the chase. His conquests were more and more offerings these days, he had come to realize. Girls from all houses of Hogwarts came to him in the night, wondering what the man could teach them in the dark, wondering if the whispers they had heard were true. They came willingly to him, wanting to learn more than a stuffy boarding-school education could provide.

But Ginevra had been different, his first seduction in months. And, since Pansy had made so sure that everyone knew what a fox he was in bed, his first seduction ever in which he had not known the outcome. That had always been part of his fascination with the girl, after all. She had never reacted to his jibes, taunts, or even his advances in the way he expected her to. Those few, tense moments in the broom cupboard, when he had invited her to return to him that night, had been so erotic he could taste it. In the small, heated room, he could smell her arousal, could feel her skin trembling beneath his fingers. And yet, he had known that she might still refuse him, known that her pride might still overpower his best-laid lines and even her own obvious desire for his body.

Their coupling had been heated, yes, but it was set aflame by the tension between them, built up over years of smirks, letters, and a half-friendship. Such a tension could not have been abated by a single act of debauchery. Surely, he supposed, the summer would only served to fuel their joint passion, so that when they returned together in the fall, they could perhaps—

_Impossible._

He had to stop thinking this way. It had been a one-time thing. That had been the deal. He hadn't been able to let go of how badly he wanted to take her for his own, even for one intense, shining moment, so he had given in, but just this once. It could not happen again.

Tired of his mind running in the same circles, the same cyclical debates over and over again, Draco pulled down his emerald sheets for the last time that year, drawing them over himself, still fully clothed in his exhaustion.

Though he had told Ginevra that her body would be the one screaming for him, he found himself dreaming of her all night long, and in spite of the fabulous release he'd had with her, Draco woke on the last day of the school year to find that the decadent images in his mind had translated to dirty sheets.

~% %~

Ginny did not sleep that night.

Her walk back to Gryffindor tower was uneventful—or at least, it must have been, she supposed, as she did not remember making the journey—and she slumped silently into one of the over-stuffed armchairs near the dying fire.

The last fire of the year.

It seemed a maliciously appropriate metaphor, and Ginny could not help but resent the traditions and prejudices that kept her encounter with Malfoy from being something anyone could ever know about. She hated that someone who filled her with such passion and desire was someone destined to be forever hated by those she held dear. It was so unfair that his family's decisions had already set his life in motion, set him on a path that would only cross her own in battle and bloodshed and hatred.

She'd found Malfoy attractive for years, she knew that much. Anyone would have to be blind not to have seen what a beautiful boy he was, but somehow, somewhere, in all the letters and hexes and sneaking out to see him, Ginny had developed…something else. She wasn't sure what it was, if it was heartache or a bruised rib, but she knew that it was physically painful in the center of her chest, and that pain seemed to spike with every thought of _him_.

She felt the tears on her face before she realized she was crying, and let out a quiet sob into a particularly ugly decorative pillow.

It was just too unfair for words. He was wonderful, even if no one else saw it. Ginny had seen that happy smirk on his face, so different from the disgusted, superior sneer he often wore. The warmth of his hands, the heat of his tongue, the power of his lust. All things she had known that no one else had, she was sure. What they had shared in that closet was different, somehow more powerful than anything he'd had with other girls, of that she was certain.

Her head fell heavily into her hands, and she realized that she still held the tiny flask in her fingers. Looking down at the leather pouch, she knew what it was even before she popped the top and the telltale scent of talc floated up to greet her. Of course Malfoy would bring a flask of contraceptive with him to meet a meaningless fling in a dark closet.

With a sigh, she swallowed the bland, vaguely bitter potion and felt the strangest sensation of tightness deep inside her body, in a place she was rarely physically aware of, save a day or two each month. This was similar to those monthly days of pain, but didn't hurt. It was not altogether unpleasant, but certainly foreign to her. At the very least, she supposed, that took care of any negative consequences of her decision to go meet him.

She did not go to breakfast the next day, opting instead to take her trunk out to the horseless carriages, where she sat for over an hour before the other students began trickling out.

The shrill voice of Pansy Parkinson approached, and she slunk back against her seat to avoid his gaze, though she could not stop herself from staring out the window to watch his retreating back.

~% %~

Draco had never found it so difficult to contrive a run-in with a fellow student. He had done it dozens of times with that so-called Golden Trio, finding just the right moment to toss a snide comment their way. Nearly every new conquest he made started with a well planned meet-cute, and yet he could not, for the life of him, find Ginevra in the corridors, at breakfast, or even on the walk down to the horseless carriages on the last day of term, though he looked for her everywhere as subtly as he could.

Despite such difficulties, he boarded the Hogwarts Express with high hopes for seeing her just once more before leaving for the summer. He knew now that nothing would ease his desire for her, and the best he could do was sneak moments in cupboards and fantasize, desiring her from afar.

The early afternoon sun was crawling up through the sky when Draco finally caught a glimpse of her as he was doing his Prefect rounds at the nearly deserted farthest end of the train in an attempt to escape Pansy. The girl had convinced herself that they needed to have a good-bye-for-the-summer shag on the train before the end of the trip, and there was no way Draco was going to stand for that. When he spotted her, Ginevra was walking past with a group of students he recognized as members of their secret Defense Against the Dark Arts meetings of that year. He had to admire her tenacity in teaching herself defensive magic, and if it was anything to go by, the fact that she had survived battles with full-grown Dark witches and wizards was a sign that, if nothing else, Potter had been a good teacher. He believed, of course, that it had mostly been Ginevra's own natural talent and quick learning that had done it, but her instructor had to be given some praise, if grudgingly.

He didn't know what made him do it—perhaps it was the way her gaze caught his, as though intentionally, or maybe the fact that he could still remember how she smelled afterward when he had lain on her chest, like sweat and sex and femininity—but as she neared him, his hand reached out to touch the door of an empty compartment he had just checked and found empty. He thought he saw the slightest of nods as her eyes flicked to the door and back to his face, but he could not be sure, so as soon as they had passed by, he ducked into the compartment and sat down to wait.

Draco wasn't sure how long was too long to wait for someone who might not be coming, but if this allowed him to shirk his Prefect's duties _and_ avoid Pansy for the remainder of the trip, perhaps he would stay put. Not that that meant he would wait for Ginevra until they pulled into King's Cross. It meant more that he would stay there, and her eventual arrival would be circumstantial, trivial, even, next to his decision not to leave.

He had himself so convinced he didn't care whether or not she arrived that he almost stopped himself from standing and whirling around like a child at Christmas at the sound of the sliding compartment door.

"Hullo," she said uncertainly.

"Hello."

Ginny could feel the strain in the air, and it made her unsure. She had half-expected him to grab her and be as forceful and possessive as he had the night before, but now she doubted that his desire to meet with her was of a sexual nature. It was surely his need to inform her that the night before had just been a one-time thing, that he didn't want her hanging on him or following him around. Though she had been expecting this at some point, Ginny realized suddenly that there was a small bubble of sick despair building in her stomach at the thought that it was already over.

"Did you want to tell me something?" she asked at last, ready to get the rejection out of the way.

"No," he replied. "I just…" Was it so bad to admit that he wanted to see her before the summer? There was nothing wrong with inter-house friendships, really. Or inter-house fucking, come to that. She certainly wasn't the first girl he'd taken who wasn't a Slytherin. "I just wanted to see you again."

"Oh?" She sounded doubtful, and he supposed he couldn't blame her; it was a very out of character thing for him to say.

"Is that so hard to believe?"

"Without an ulterior motive of some kind, yes."

Well, he supposed that was a fair enough summation of his usual character, though he would never admit how much it stung him to know that was how she saw him. "And if there was one?" he prodded, wondering how willing her appearance in the compartment had been. "Would you stay, or would you leave?"

"Well," she muttered in a rare moment of flustered confusion. "Well, I suppose it would depend on the type of ulterior motive."

He smirked at her, his signature _seen you naked, want to see it again_ smirk. The meaning wasn't lost on Ginevra, if he could judge by the answering eye roll and accompanying chuckle.

"Aren't we incorrigible?" she mused quietly. "I've certainly heard how often you return to a conquest, but I feel perhaps a big smug that you barely made it a whole night before you came crawling back for more."

The teasing in her voice reminded him of their discreet correspondence during their first years in school together. It savored strongly of companionship, of something closer to friendship than he had ever experienced with another Slytherin, or indeed within his own family. She sounded almost fond of his smarmy ways and sex-god reputation.

"Well, I didn't see you exactly running the other way, either," he drawled in response, slipping seamlessly into his teasing smirk.

"It'll be a long, lonely summer, I expect. It'd be downright masochistic to avoid you, wouldn't it?" She took a step, closing the gap between them slightly.

He could hardly believe his luck. She was _teasing_ him.

"Then why have you been avoiding me all morning?" he whispered, taking a step toward her.

Ginevra glanced sideways, a flash of vulnerability sliding across her features before she regained her composure enough to reply, "I wanted to find a compartment early."

He chuckled lowly, sliding his fingertips up her arm in the barest touch he could manage, appreciating the trail of goosebumps that followed the same path across her fair skin. He didn't let her obvious lie deter him from their little game, however, and he replied, "We seem to have found one alright."

"I was looking for a bigger one. This one doesn't have room for all of us."

He smirked down into her bright hazel eyes, brushing her hair back behind her ear. He bent down slightly, to whisper in her ear, lips barely touching the delicate skin there. "It's plenty cozy for two, though."

Draco could feel as much as see her nervous glance at the very transparent door of the compartment, leaving their indiscretions available for any passers-by to see. "But Malfoy," she whispered, a bright flush creeping up behind her ears, "anyone could walk by and see."

He scoffed quietly. "This far down the train? Hardly likely." He paused, grinning at her sudden discomfort, before adding, "But if you're concerned," he gestured his wand toward the compartment door, whispering, "_Obscuro._"

Ginny watched as the panes of glass seemed to ripple like water. A spot of blackness appeared in the center, as if a drop of ink had fallen onto the liquid glass. It spread outward, carried by the motion of the waves, until all the panes of glass had turned dark.

"_Muffliato_."

Ginny's ears were instantly filled with a faint buzzing noise, like the sound of faeries in the garden on a hot summer night. "What is it?" she asked, as the buzzing retreated, realizing only vaguely that her face was tilted up to meet his, only inches away.

"Anyone passing by that door will hear nothing but that buzzing noise," he replied, barely needing to breathe out the words for her to hear. "_Colloportus_."

This time, Ginny could readily identify the noise of the door sealing shut, an odd squelching, as of trodding upon a slug. They were well and truly alone, the obscured door sealed shut and all sounds hidden from anyone wandering about in the corridor.

So they would be doing _this_ again. After the release of the night before, Ginny could hardly be disappointed in this turn of events, but she couldn't help wondering why.

"Why?" Apparently, she couldn't help asking, either.

"Why what?" he asked quietly, his voice still husky.

"Why are we doing this again?" She stepped away from his ardent gaze, trying to clear her head.

"Because, Ginevra," he purred, matching her movement so that they remained close, "we're amazing together, aren't we?"

His response surprised her a bit, though she could hardly deny the truth in his words. Unable to form a rebuttal that was both coherent and honest, she scoffed gently, wishing it had had a more scathing sound as it came out of her mouth.

"Aren't we?" Malfoy sidled even closer to her body, pressing his frame right against hers, so that she could feel with trepidation his stiffening length pressed against her stomach. His next words were spoken directly into her ear, and she wasn't sure if it was the way his lips brushed against the shell of her ear as he spoke, or the words he was saying that left her trembling with barely concealed arousal. "You've never had it so good as me, Ginevra. And that was just a quick leg over in a broom cupboard. Imagine what I could do to you with a bit of space to stretch out in here. Or if we had a whole bed, oh! What delicious things I would do to your sweet little body." He gripped her hip with one hand, dragging the knuckles of the other down the side of her neck.

"Ah…" The shaky sound slipped from between her lips, somewhere between a whimper and a sigh, while her traitorous head tilted off to one side, exposing her neck.

"Is that what you want, pet?" His hands met at the back of her neck, holding her precisely where he wanted in order to nibble across the tender flesh there.

"Unh…" Her inability to form words was beginning to irritate her on principle, so she nodded her head in agreement. It turned out to be too much to hope that that would be enough for Malfoy.

"I want to hear you say it, Ginevra," he hissed gently, drawing her toward the seats on one side of the compartment. One hand released from caressing her throat, moving down instead to palm each of her breasts in turn. "Say you want me. We both know it's true."

"Mm…Ah…" This really was getting ridiculous, she thought. She was a well-spoken young woman, and this smug bastard had effortlessly turned her into a squishy pile of— "Oh bloody hell!"

Draco chuckled darkly, and she looked down to where her bunched-up skirt fell across his wrist, the hand attached stroking her lightly through her knickers. He pulled his hand out, leaving the wool skirt to swish freely around her knees, and whispered, "Say it."

She gasped, visibly shaking head to toe now. He was beginning to worry that he'd pushed her past the ability to speak at all—an impressive feat it would be, even for him—when she finally said in a breathy, dry voice, "I want you, Malfoy. P – please."

He crooked a finger under her chin, forcing her to look him in the eye, and gloated internally at the glazed-over look in her eyes. "There now," he said softly, gazing down on her blissful expression. "That wasn't so hard, was it Ginevra? You even said please. I quite like that. Very polite little Gryffindor, you are. Now I'll show you all the naughties I have to share."

Draco made quick work of her shirt buttons, noticing that she had shed her school robes but left the rest of her uniform on. She loosened her red and gold necktie, but didn't get around to removing it, having been distracted by the ease with which he unclasped her bra. He didn't seem patient enough to get her clothes off entirely though, or perhaps he wasn't as sure as he led on about no one walking in on them. In either case, the feel of his lips across the sensitive skin of her stomach pulled her away from rational thought once more.

She hadn't realized the expanse of her belly and ribcage could be so erotically touched. Usually with other boys, they had stuck to the main areas of interest. Malfoy, it seemed, was familiar enough with the female form that he knew how to turn every inch of her into a new erogenous zone.

He feasted upon her flesh like a man starved of touch—or, he mused, a man about to be starved of touch for an entire, endless summer—while she arched her midsection toward him. His hands slipped lower, feathering the lightest of touches across her skin. He reveled in the gooseflesh that rose up to meet his touch, noticing that her nipples had both grown taut as well. Leaving his hands to trail teasingly low across her belly and backside, Draco raised his head, intent on grabbing that small pink bud between his lips.

The colors of her Gryffindor tie caught his eye, however. His first inclination was to rip the offending garment from her slender neck, the second to then bind her wrists with it. As he pulled back from her, however, he was struck by how delicately her small, pale breasts framed the vibrant school tie. Even with her bra pushed roughly up, he could see a distinct, naughty beauty in having this fantastic creature bared to him, sporting the colors of the house that made this lust so forbidden in the first place. Draco took a moment to imagine her wearing nothing but that tie, stretched out in wanton need across the green silk of his bed. He tucked away that image to support a good wank or two later in the summer, and returned to the real thing at hand.

Glancing up at her face, he saw Ginevra's hooded eyes gazing down at him, waiting patiently for his next move. He was suddenly forcefully aware that he hadn't yet kissed her, which for some reason just seemed wrong in the flow of things. Draco stood abruptly, taking her fiery hair in his fists and smashing his lips to hers in a violent kiss that left them both gasping for air. It reminded him of the quick, mad shag they'd had in the broom cupboard, and he gentled his touch ever so slightly, wanting to savor this time.

His hands slid down her back, loosely pinning her arms to her sides while his tongue deftly explored the soft contours of her mouth. Ginny was so filled with wave after wave of burning lust that she could hardly understand what was happening around her. She could feel her own arousal puddling uncontrollably between her legs, could feel it overflowing and seeping out to stain her cotton knickers. She could feel her limbs trembling delicately as she waited for Malfoy to do something more concrete than teasing his lips across her jaw, or down the side of her throat, or grazing his teeth across her— "_Oh hell_!"

Draco smiled against her collarbone, making note of that hyper-sensitive bit of flesh to return to later on. Ginevra stood in his arms, shaking noticeably, the tremors growing with each passing moment. He began to worry that she might start to seize, when her dry voice whispered, "_Please_."

Well, if that wasn't enough to undo a man, Draco didn't know what was. He didn't even stop to tease her as he normally would, ask her, _Please what, Ginevra? Do you want me to touch you? Tell me where you want my touch._

Instead, he switched their positions, so that he could lay her across the length of the compartment seat. It wasn't quite wide enough that she could lie down fully upon it, but with one foot each on the floor they were able to make the space available work. Draco watched in earnest fascination as her knee drew up, causing her skirt to slide up her thigh, exposing flesh he had only been able to feel in the dark the night before. The warm scent of her arousal floated up to meet his nostrils, and with a single, deep inhalation, Draco knew what he had to do before anything else.

Even with a foot bracing her on the floor, Ginny could feel herself slipping off the compartment bench. She pulled her other foot up closer to her body to provide herself more support. A brief thought that doing so would expose her more to the man above her was quickly quieted by the notion that, that was the point if this after all, wasn't it? So while she didn't intend it as an invitation, Ginny certainly didn't feel any surprise when Malfoy's hand found her crooked knee.

She felt only slightly surprised when that hand trailed down in the inside of her thigh, inching toward her aching wetness. She wasn't surprised, but also wasn't expecting it when his hands curled up under her hips and raised her bum off the seat. She was slightly surprised when his hands didn't immediately removed her underwear, and she was absolutely shocked when she curled up to look at him, and his face was nowhere to be found.

Though she could easily make out the back of his platinum blonde head just above the line of her skirt.

She could hear him breathing, inhaling her scent, as he pressed her thighs even farther apart, and the thought made Ginny quiver in mixed embarrassment and arousal. She'd had Michael Corner perform oral pleasure on her a handful of times, but it was usually quick, something he did because he felt he should.

Draco was fully prepared to die after this experience, because surely nothing could be as fantastic as what he was about to taste, if her scent alone was anything to go by. No longer satisfied by only inhaling her, Draco settled between her parted legs, able to see the wetness that had soaked through what appeared to be innocent cotton knickers. He smiled to himself at the sight, then gently prodded the dark spot of fabric with his tongue.

They both gasped, Ginny at the erotic tease, and Draco at the flavor of her, clean and feminine, and somehow just as floral as the rest of her. Creeping back around her hip, Draco used his right hand to tug the guarding fabric out of his way, revealing her glorious red curls, dampened with her own arousal. He'd hardly ever seen a more delectable sight.

Ginny could do nothing but tremble and whimper under his touch as she waited for the fantastic tongue of Draco Malfoy that she had heard celebrated in secretive whispers.

The first touch of his tongue to her flesh was less aggressive than Ginny had expected. Michael Corner had always dove in with gusto, taking the same approach he did to shagging, and assuming she liked it as rough as she did sex. While Ginny had never had a problem telling her boyfriends exactly what she liked at every stage of intimacy, having a boy's face between her legs felt so taboo she didn't quite know how to critique the technique. Moreover, it was so clearly a chore to her current paramour that she suspected he would stop altogether if she made him feel inadequate.

Malfoy, on the other hand, seemed only too pleased to take part in this task.

After his teasing taste of Ginevra through her thin cotton knickers, Draco decided to draw things out for both of them. After gazing down at her bared womanhood for several seconds in abashed want, he slid his tongue across the seam of her thigh. Allowing his tongue to wander closer to her centre, Draco drew one fleshy lobe into his mouth, suckling at the tender flesh and revelling in the sensations she created in his mouth.

This was undoubtedly his favorite part of most women, the boundary between the softness of the rest of her body and the silken bliss of her pussy, the two velvets separated by coarse curls. He moaned softly, savoring the rough texture of saliva-matted curls against his tongue on one side of her lip, and when he slipped it to the other side, the faintest hint of her inner folds and the nectar they held. He moved his mouth all the way up the side of her sweet quim, purposely avoiding her clit as he worked his way down the other side.

The sounds Ginevra was making were sinful, at best. She was a wanton goddess, panting and begging for a more substantial touch. He pulled back, pressing her skirt onto her belly so the afternoon light from the train window could illuminate her body for his feasting eyes. Her curls were darker red now, matted with his own spit, no longer fluffed out together to hide her from his needy gaze. With her legs spread, the swollen flesh of her sex was split ever so slightly, so that he could see a small, glistening spot nestled at the base of her slit, where her body opened up to him. Knowing his tongue needed to be there right that moment, Draco knelt back down, spreading himself across the narrow space of the compartment seats.

Ginny's hands covered her own eyes, as though she could hardly stand all the sensations, and had to cover her line of sight to mute one of her senses. Everything happening was so intense, so much more real and passionate than anything she had experienced before. Malfoy's mouth latched onto her without hesitation, knowing just how to bestow attention in all the best ways.

When he sat up, flipping her skirt over her lower stomach, Ginny assumed he would take her then. His hands settled on the inside of her thighs, pressing them outward, and she waited for the blunt, thick head of his cock to impale her.

Oh, was she surprised.

Draco brought his tongue to a point, and pressed it directly into her slit, piercing her delicate folds easily with the gush of wetness hiding between her lips. Her answering cry of shock and sudden rise into a half-sitting position made him look up at her, smirking as best he could while his tongue smoothly made the line from the outside of her hole to wind up and around her clit.

Ginny looked down at the boy between her legs, saw him stare _right at her_ as his tongue touched her most private places, watched his tongue moving around, and could smell her own arousal. Brain overworked again, Ginny fell back, throwing an arm across her face to save her poor, overheated mind from trying to process more images so hot she thought she might die.

The ability to form coherent sentences was long gone for Ginny, but that image of his eyes staring so powerfully into her own seemed to sap her ability to filter anything coming out of her mouth.

"Oh, fuck," she whispered, mouth too dry to speak more clearly. A harsh swallow helped a bit, but then Malfoy's tongue went back down to her hole, poking into her just enough to make her aware he could do more, and she gasped loudly. He teased her mercilessly, pushing in slightly to make her think he would finally do it, then pulling his tongue away to kiss, suckle, and lick another unexplored bit of flesh.

Ginny had the fleeting thought that perhaps she ought to tell Michael Corner to stop doing this entirely, as she knew now his clumsy attempts would be pointlessly ineffective next to Malfoy's well-practiced skill.

Draco didn't say anything as he worked his mouth on and around her sweet, nectar-filled peach. She was nearly swollen closed now, and he had to use two fingers just below his mouth to spread her lips open so that he could delve into her tight body. He knew she was beyond words, knew how desperately she needed him to finish her, and the smugness it filled him with was smothering.

When he finally pierced her fully, pressing all of his tongue that he could into her hot, tight twat, his lips and nose pressed into the wet heat of her, Ginny lost any remaining inhibitions. She could not stop the hand that reached down to palm the back of his blond head, holding him down to her aching pussy. She also couldn't stop the wild bucks of her hips, trying to gain even another milimetre of his tongue inside her, nor did she even attempt to block the keening moan that slipped from her lips, begging, "Don't stop. Merlin, Malfoy don't stop. Un...I need...just a little more."

Never one to disappoint a lady, Draco flipped his tongue in expertly practiced motions, fucking her with his tongue, eager to bring her to her first orgasm of the afternoon. One hand came up to circle her clit, but found her knickers in the way, soaked through now with her juices and his saliva. He grabbed the thinning fabric and tugged. The tip of one finger found a torn seam, and with a harsh flick of his wrist, the offending fabric settled beneath her bum, leaving her fully bared to him.

Hardly missing a beat, Draco dove back into her, free now to explore every bit of wanton flesh without the annoying barrier of clothes. His tongue flashed out of his mouth before he'd even bent down fully, the digit spearing her upon impact, while his nimble fingers were able to once again wage war on her distended clitoris.

Ginny was lost in the ecstasy of his double attentions as hand and mouth worked together to deftly undo her at the seams. She could feel her orgasm approaching and was shocked, having never before come from this. Her other hand reached down to join the first, holding Malfoy's head and neck in the perfect position to finish her.

Draco could feel from the stuttering thrust of her hips that Ginevra was painfully close, but he decided to hold her off just once more. Switching his digits, he plunged two fingers into her slick tunnel, sliding in easily from her wetness, despite her being just as tight as he remembered, while suckling her clit gently with his lips.

"No!" she gasped above him, arching her back and whining. "Go back, please, go back. I was so close." His throbbing dick agreed wholeheartedly, urging him to finish her, so he could get lost in her body and find his own release.

The fact that he ignored her flatly made Ginny suspect he was fully aware of what he'd done in prolonging her orgasm. Or at least, it would make her suspect it later, when her mind was once again functioning. Nevertheless, Malfoy seemed to be gifted no matter what he was doing, and she soon felt herself returning to her peak.

Draco had intended to let her finish this time, end her agony in one final explosion. He was committed to making her come harder than she ever had in her life, and his fingers worked tirelessly inside her, pushing her closer and closer to that edge, determined he would not stop until she came, writhing in his hands.

Suddenly, a sensation far too gentle for the situation distracted him for just a moment. He looked up, slowing only slightly, to find Ginevra's small hand smoothing the sweat from his brow. The rest of her, in stark contrast to the delicate touch on his face, was the image of an utterly debauched mess of a woman. Her hair was half plastered to her face with sweat, half bushy and out of control as it slid against the rough fabric of the compartment seats. Those lovely eyes were hidden from view, with her head thrown back, mouth moving wordlessly in a slack jaw. A flush had settled across her face, working down to stain her lovely, pert breasts and heaving abdomen with a tinge of bright pink, contrasted nicely against the clean white of her shirt.

It was exquisite.

Ginny kept one palm to the back of his head, but loosened her grip so he could look her in the eye. Her glazed hazel eyes met his, and she licked her lips and had to swallow repeatedly before managing to beg, "Go back, please. I want it the other way."

"You don't like this?"

"I do, I do, I so do," she assured him. "Only, I-mmhm-I want to-" She broke off, suddenly shy.

"Tell me how you want it, and I'll give it to you," Draco whispered hoarsely. It was a sincere sentiment; nothing pleased him more than thoroughly pleasuring his partners, and he found himself inexplicably concerned that this particular partner be satisfied in every way.

Bravery and desire giving her strength, Ginny said in a rush, "I want to come on your tongue."

Draco could do nothing but stare for half a moment, until his body caught up with his stunned brain, before instantly granting the most erotic wish he'd ever heard. He plunged back into her tight recesses, foregoing to the use of his fingers to press his face flush against her pussy, forcing his tongue to new depths inside her.

"Oh, bloody hell, yes! Mmm, yes that!" Ginny moaned, no longer in control of her mouth, or the rest of her body, for that matter. Her hands found purchase once again in the fine strands of his hair and her feet scrabbled across his back, while her hips ground shamelessly into each thrust of his tongue. "Fuck me with your tongue!" she begged, feeling the tightness curling inside her, coiling tighter with each motion.

Draco reached down to his belt buckle, fumbling one-handed to open his belt and pants. The rough fabric beneath him kept freeing his pained cock from being an option, so he settled for pushing his trousers down, leaving his knickers in place as a protective layer. He wanted to be ready to take her as soon as she finished, wedging into her hotness while he could still feel her walls spasming for him.

"Ma-Malfoy! Yesyes, just there! Oh, Malfoy, I'm-I'm going to-"

The keening cry that rent the air, Draco thought, was the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard, and it seemed never to stop as Ginevra wriggled and writhed beneath him. A fresh wave of her sweet juices rolled into his mouth as she rode out her orgasm against his face.

When he could feel her spasms slowing slightly, he knew she was past the crest and was now riding out the smaller waves, which was precisely how he wanted her. With barely a pause to tug down his knickers and wipe his mouth on his shirt, Draco crawled up her body, sheathing himself without effort as her hungry body pulled him in.

She seemed hardly surprised by his actions, and rather than speaking or even looking at him, she pulled him down to kiss her. Ginny moaned at the flavor or herself in his mouth, something she had always enjoyed when Michael Corner went down on her. The kiss was wet and sloppy as she drug her tongue through his mouth, pulling her own juices from every surface while her hips still ground up to meet his erratic thrusts. Neither pulled away from the kiss to breathe, opting to pant heavily into the kiss, heating the air between them. Despite her very recent climax, Ginny could feel a second already creeping up on her.

Bent over the compartment seats, Draco couldn't find the leverage to fuck her properly, so he cradled her rag-doll limp form in his arms and pulled her up to straddle his lap as he sat squarely on one of the seats. She gasped, but didn't stop grinding or kissing him, too lost in sensation to care much for her surroundings.

Ginny was vaguely aware of the new position, of how much bigger he felt and how tightly he filled her like this. As she rode him, she quickly learned that her clit was crushed against his abdomen each time he impaled her, once again forcing her toward that edge of ecstasy. She ripped away from the kiss to grunt, "Ungh, Malf- I'm-ah, again."

"Again?" The words floated hotly across her ear, tugging at something deep and primal inside her. "You're going to come again? With my cock inside, are you gonna come on my cock, Ginevra? Gonna squeeze that hot quim around me while you scream my name?"

His filthy, delicious words were a new experience for Ginny, and one she found she enjoyed. "Yes," she gasped, still proud enough even in her lust-hazed mind to return in kind. "Yes, I'm going to come on your thick cock, gonna come all over you. Let me taste it again," she added, pulling him by the hair into another kiss. His answering groan of surprise carried the taste of herself on his breath, and just like that, she was on the brink.

Draco could feel it as well, and his impending climax answered with a throb. A sudden urge took him as he goaded her on, "Come for me Ginevra. Scream my name. Call me Dr-"

But his final request was drowned out as Ginny once again called out his surname in climax. The disappointment he couldn't quite quell was just enough to pull him away from the edge of his orgasm, even as he felt hers ripping through her body and joined with her again in a kiss.

Rather than going on nonstop as he had for her first orgasm, Draco held still inside her as best he could, smoothing his hands across her skin where he could reach it, her rumpled clothes where he couldn't. Her limbs moved spastically around him while her mouth roved across his neck and shoulders, her slight fingers tugging at the buttons of his shirt. He allowed Ginevra to remove his shirt, shrugging off the wrinkled material and leaving it stuffed behind him.

Content for the moment to enjoy her lovely attentions, Draco rested his head on the seatback behind him, eyes closed and neck exposed for Ginevra's mouth

*Ginny was entranced by the texture of the sprinkling of hair across Malfoy's chest, as fine as the rest of his hair and so blond as to be nearly invisible against his even paler skin. His arms were equally pale, though she was delighted to find a smattering of sun freckles dusted the tops of his shoulders. As she ran her hands across his bare skin, Ginny continued rocking her body gently against his. Small ripples of pleasure still ran through her, and she realized absently that he hadn't come yet, still hard inside her.

Now that she had been fulfilled-twice, a feat no one else besides herself had ever managed-Ginny was once again in full possession of her wits and pride, and decided that Draco Malfoy deserved a round at his own game. Placing her hands on his shoulders, she drew herself up, revelling in the tight pull of him inside her. Unable to resist a repeat of the sensation, she sank down again, eliciting a deep groan from Malfoy. His groan became one of protestation, however, when she pulled herself off him completely. Her body cried out against the sensation of emptiness, but first she had to make him beg as she had.

Draco waited in distress to see what her next move would be. Surely Ginevra wouldn't leave him to it now? He hoped, for more than one reason that he wasn't prepared to think about at the moment, that she wasn't going to leave him there just yet. His hips moved of their own accord, arching up to seek the relief of the tight heat inside her. But she was having none of it.

To stop Malfoy's attempted reentry, Ginny quickly covered her mound with a hand. While her hand was there, it decided it may as well do something about the aching desire she felt. But that meant that she was now holding her balance with the strength of her thighs and a single hand on his shoulder. The burn in her pussy was soon competing for attention with the burn in her legs. She hoped, for both pride and pleasure's sakes, he'd prove even easier to crack that she had been.

"Say you want me, Malfoy," she egged, repeating his own words back to him mockingly. "We both know it's true." The venom she'd hoped to insert into her voice was somewhat dampened by the breathy note of arousal.

A very brief internal struggle ensued, during which Draco's pride protested against admitting the obvious to Ginevra, and his cock promptly told his pride to sod off.

"I want you, Ginevra," he groaned almost instantly.

Caught unawares by Malfoy's unguarded response, Ginny could only manage to reply a relieved, "Good," before rising above him again.

Draco supported her weight by gripping her hips, purposely leaving Ginevra to grip his shaft with her small, warm hand and position his tip at her entrance. In other circumstances, the moan he gave at that sensation would have been embarrassing, if the lovely girl in his lap weren't making equally erotic sounds.

Almost as soon as Ginevra regained her steady rhythm riding him, Draco could feel himself approaching the point of no return, but knew that she wasn't quite close enough yet. He turned his head sharply, catching her hand on his cheek. Turning back slightly so he could look her in the eye as he did so, Draco watched her carefully as he took the tips of two of her slender fingers between his lips. He worked his tongue over and around the digits, and though he could taste the bitterness of his Sleekeasy's Hair Potion on her hand, he couldn't be bothered by it at that moment. No doubt remembering his talented tongue swiping across even more sensitive flesh, Ginevra had closed her eyes and moaned in a way that should have been made illegal.

"'Ere," he grunted. Taking the same hand by the wrist, he placed it between them, whispering, "Touch yourself for me."

"Can't finish me off yourself?" she teased, though it was hard to take her jibe seriously when she gasped and immediately began working at her clit with the two wet fingers.

"Oh, I could," he snarked back, deftly replacing her fingers with his own for a moment. "But it's so much hotter to watch you get yourself off while you ride me." 

Well then, Ginny thought, if Malfoy wanted a show.

Placing a steadying hand behind herself on Malfoy's knee, Ginny leaned back, pushing her breasts out and using her other hand to expertly manipulate her own pleasure as they thrust together in unison. This kept him from plunging as deep inside her, but it also meant that he ran against that secret ridge inside her with every motion. She gasped loudly and felt his hands tighten briefly on her hips in response. An amorous moan yielded the same result, and then Ginny made sure to vocalize every bit of pleasure she experienced.

At first, the competitive nature of their first coupling seeped into the small, hot compartment. Draco caught one nipple in his mouth, using a hand to toy with the other between his fingers. Ginny, unable to free a hand without falling over or ruining her own orgasm, clenched down around Malfoy, dragging her body along his length, revelling in every bulging vein that moved inside her. In turn, Draco lifted his head to capture her in a fierce kiss, thrusting his tongue and his cock into her in matching rhythm.

Malfoy's strong arms wrapped around Ginny, pulling her flush against him. After a brief struggle to free the hand trapped between their sweat-slick bodies, Ginny once again took advantage of the fact that she could grind her sensitive bud directly against the firm flesh of his abdomen. Her hands came up to grip his slender shoulders. The way he was holding her made his arms and chest bulge deliciously, and Ginny feasted on the offered banquet, her hands sliding across his bared torso.

When they finally had to tear apart for air, Draco kept her held tightly, and she rested her forehead against his, eyes screwed tightly closed as she worked herself over him, searching for sweet release.

"You're close, aren't you?" he rasped.

Without opening her eyes, Ginny bit her lip and nodded, humming in agreement.

"So close, my lioness," he whispered, lips brushing against hers as he spoke. "Come for me again."

"I want-I mean, I need-" she struggled to put words to the something missing. "I need something-else, more. I don't know." Her eyes screwed shut again, this time in evident irritation with her own fickle body.

"You need something else?" he asked. "Something more than this?" He thrust hard into her, lifting her body off the seat so that her legs dangled around him.

"I need you!" she gasped in sudden realization as he lowered back to the seats.

"I'm right here," he murmured, brushing her hair.

"No, I need you," she tried again, trying and failing to quite meet his eye. "I need you to...you know."

"I don't." He did, of course. But hearing her say it would be so much fun.

"Come first," she finally admitted, coloring more deeply than he thought possible. "I want you to finish, in-inside."

In normal circumstances, Draco would have had another litany of filthy words poised on the tip of his tongue, ready to throw her dirty desires back on her, urging her to an unexpected orgasm with his words alone. With any other girl, he'd have told her how naughty that made her, what a slut she must be to want his seed inside her, to _need_ it, to let that be what made her come. But in this situation, hearing her ask for it was enough to undo his quickly unraveling self-control. He came with a shout, pouring his sounds of passion into her mouth in a violent, messy kiss.

"Yes, yes, yes," she chanted, slapping her body against his with such fervor, he wondered that she didn't hurt herself.

Ginny could feel him swell inside her at her words, and only moments after, he was releasing into her, warm and wet, and just what she needed.

Through the heavy-lidded haze of his own orgasmic fallout, Draco watched as Ginny approached her third orgasm of the day. Unlike the first two, she rode herself to this one in absolute silence, so concentrated on her own pleasure that sound failed to escape her throat. Without her cries of passion and pleasure, Draco was free to really look at her for the first time since entering the compartment. It was surreal to see her, so close, his for the moment, yet so far removed from him in reality, taking himself into her and giving nothing but mind-blowing pleasure in return. He watched as Ginevra's mouth opened wide in an _O_ shape, heard her breath hitch once, and saw her fall apart in his lap. Her midsection seized, and she appeared to have lost all control of her own limbs once again, clamping her knees into his hips and clawing at her own skin, utterly lost in the sensations.

Without a doubt, Ginny knew that she had never come so hard, or so many times, in her short life, and she suspected strongly that she never would again, unless Draco Malfoy was once again welcomed into her bed-or train compartment, as the case may be. Immediate plans for the following year, moments they could duck out and be intimate, began flowing through her mind before the thought of who she was fantasizing about brought her screeching to a halt.

Draco had the brief thought that the sound of his own breathing was superfluously loud in the tiny compartment before she was standing and beginning to right herself.

Ginny quickly discovered that standing up was a bit of a feat, as her hips complained from being spread so long, and her legs were too shaky yet for her to stand without having to lean against the wall. As soon as she felt confident her legs wouldn't literally buckle in front of Malfoy-really, could she think of anything more humiliating?-she set about putting herself to rights. Having been taught cleaning spells well by the bustling Mrs. Weasley, Ginny was able to remove the majority of sweat, saliva, and other bodily fluids from her skin, though she had to suppress a shudder as she whisked away the puddle of thicker substance smeared across her thighs. Her own inability to control her desires was pushing her nerves, already frayed by the week's events, to the breaking point. When she found the torn-out gusset dangling from her waist instead of the perfectly fine, if slightly worn, panties she had put on that morning, and looked up to see Malfoy smiling lazily at nothing in particular, all amorous feelings for him evaporated. Really, she barely even noticed the drop of nearly opaque fluid oozing from the tip of his spent cock, and her mouth hardly went at all dry at the sight.

"And my knickers, too?" Her irritated voice pulled Draco from his post-coital haze.

"What?"

"Last night, you tore my bra off, and now you've destroyed my knickers!" Ginevra wrenched off the tattered cotton garment and held it up as proof. "I'll have none left at this rate!" She flushed suddenly pink at the implication that she expected such encounters to continue, but he noticed with admiration that she made no statement to correct herself.

"I'll get you new ones." She looked up at him in surprise, and he wondered what on earth had made him say such a thing. He had never purchased anything beyond the occasional shiny trinket for Pansy—he had found it distracted her whenever she heard rumors she didn't like—and he wasn't at all sure what would possess him to offer to buy Ginevra new undergarments, of all things. That just smacked of intimacy, and this had to stop now, for both their sakes.

"I don't want your money, Malfoy," she spat, though there was little malice behind it.

"But I ruined them, didn't I?"

"Yes, but—" she sputtered, unable to come up with a really good reason that he shouldn't. For whatever reason, she couldn't come up with her usual brand of heinous vitriol. She blamed it on the orgasmic effects on the brain, rather than any lingering affection for the sodding great prat. "But I don't think either of us wants much to do with the other anymore, and anyway, I think it was—well, I mean to say…I think you've made up for it already, if you get my meaning."

"Oh."

"Yes," she replied lamely. "Anyway, I'd better be going, before someone comes looking for me. We've all got a compartment together to sort of, you know, work through things that have happened this month."

As she was reaching out to open the compartment door, his thin fingers appeared to stay her hand. She looked back at him questioningly, but he was staring so fiercely at the place where his hand rested on her wrist, she wasn't sure he even remembered her presence.

Draco stopped to try and gather his thoughts, to come up with something witty or clever or snide or impressive to say to her, but he could think of nothing that would combine the two worlds that were currently warring inside his mind. Instead, he looked her in the eye for a brief moment and did something that he had never done after sex before, not even with Pansy. He wrenched her arm, pulling her to his body and crashed his lips down upon hers, as though drinking in her essence to try to sustain him for the long summer ahead.

"This can't continue on," he muttered between kisses, unwilling to leave her lips for anything.

"Why not?" she asked innocently. Her hands curled up into the lapels on his shirt and groaning, he pulled her back down into the seat of the compartment, drawing her into his lap in a more caring manner this time. After a few moments of his response including nothing more substantial than kisses, she added, "Because of your reputation?"

This assumption stilled his lips just long enough for her to pull away slightly and look him in the eye. "No," he whispered, burying his face in her neck, inhaling the soft, flowery scent that often surrounded her. "No, if it were just school gossip, I'd—I just wouldn't—" He cut himself off before he had a chance to say anything too dangerous. "It's nothing that simple."

"Then what is it?"

"I just want to kiss you," he whispered, unaware until it had left his mouth what he had said. For the first time, he just couldn't care that something so forbidden had fallen out of his mouth. It was the truth, and Ginevra had been his for the night before, so perhaps they could have just a few more moments of that.

"But not for long," she reminded him gently, returning his kisses with less fervor than before.

He sighed heavily. "Because, Ginevra," he whispered. "There's a war on. He's back."

"And our families are on different sides? I know it's difficult, but—"

"Ginevra," he said slowly, unsure whether or not she had yet realized this, "_we're_ on different sides of the war."

"Are we?" Her gaze was level and unflinching, and from this close he could see the tiniest of golden flecks. He had never questioned his parents' loyalty to the Dark ways, had never thought of his desire for her as anything less than traitorous, some shameful lust he could not stop, but staring into her eyes he wondered for the first time what his own opinion was on the subject. But this, this was too far. He would not let her push him so far as to question his loyalty to his family and tradition.

"Yes," he answered flatly. "We are."

"Alright then." She stood, and he could already feel his arms cooling with her absence. Turning away to straighten her skirt, she added, "Thank you. For last night and just now, I mean. It was lovely—well, not lovely, I mean to say it was—"

"Ginevra," he said, almost too quietly for her to hear. But she did, and turned once again to look.

Ginny knew that this was likely the last time she would ever be alone with Malfoy, and while there were a thousand pathetically simpering things rushing through her mind that she could have said, and another thousand scathing attacks ready to be launched, the only thing she could think to say was, "Why do you call me that?"

"Call you what?" Her question had caught him off-guard, especially as he had been considering how green her eyes were that day.

"Ginevra," she replied, as though it were obvious. "You've always called me that."

"It's your name," he said in a similar tone.

"Yes, I know that." She was starting to get irritated again; she hadn't thought he would be so difficult about a simple question. "But every else just calls me Ginny."

Malfoy stood, cupping her face between his hands. It was a tender gesture that she had not expected from him, and it nearly frightened her. He looked down at her for a moment, as though pondering his response, before he responded, "Ginny is a name for a little girl." He kissed her forehead delicately. "Ginevra is a woman's name."

She paused for a long moment, staring up into his eyes and noticing again that there _was_ just the barest trace of blue among the pale grey—perhaps it was only a trick of the light, but she was sure it was really there—before daring to whisper, "Then what sort of a name is Malfoy?"

"It's what you would call a boy you detest in school," he replied, just as quietly.

"And Draco?"

"Yes?" He had never heard his given name on her lips before, unless it was being spat in anger, and he found that his name was quite safe in her mouth, spoken with the dignity it had been intended to possess.

She smiled, hardly able to breathe through her pounding heart. "No, I meant, what sort of a name is Draco?"

He stopped to think on the answer to this question, loaded as it was. He could easily have tossed out something joking to ease the tension, told her it was the name of a man who had given her the four best orgasms of her life in less than a day. He could have said it was the name of a proud man who had to live up to his family's expectations and remain loyal to his upbringing. He could even have said that it was a name of a man who could not be seen with someone of her inferior class and stature.

But he said none of these things.

What he leaned down to whisper into her ear was, "It's the name of a man who would keep you, if only he could."

Ginny's hand found its way of its own accord to clasp one of his where it rested still on her cheek. Her other hand wound around the back of his neck, drawing him down toward her for a final kiss, as she whispered, "Draco."

They stood in that sweet, tender, treacherous embrace for as long as they dared, until Draco pulled away at last. With a heavy sigh he pulled away from her, kissing her forehead and pressing a small object into her hand as he had the night before. Ginny kept her eyes closed, trying to memorize the smell of his fancy, intoxicating cologne, but regretted it immediately when she heard the compartment door unseal and then close with a soft _click_. Her eyes flew open and she whirled around in time to see the flip of his black school robes in the edge of the newly transparent pane, her hand grasped tightly around the leather flask.

~% %~

**A/N**: If you'd like to keep reading this fic, or OKFY, I strongly, **strongly** suggest using the Author/Story Alert functions. Once again, posting will not be resuming on any set or regular basis, but I am continuing to work on these stories, and they have not been abandoned. So if you are very patient, I hope that you will find it pays off.

Rock on, keep reading, and as always, review!

cj596


	9. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Harry Potter or his world. I just play with them sometimes, but I always put them back where I found them.

**A/N:** Picks up immediately from the end of the previous chapter.

This chapter dedicated to Lover of Fantasy, who read the entire story in a single day and reviewed every single chapter!

~% %~

When Draco descended the steps of the Hogwarts Express, he was reminded forcibly of the world outside of Hogwarts and passionate declarations and his schoolboy infatuations by the sight of his mother, standing alone on the platform and looking a bit lost. He went to her at once, taking her arm as the temporary man of the household, and guiding her to the barrier between their world and the Muggle one. He no longer had to glance back to see if Crabbe or Goyle were taking care of his trunk. It seemed that with the return of the Dark Lord, the pecking order in Slytherin House had been more rigidly enforced by its occupants over the last week of term.

As Ginny stepped down from the train, thanking Neville for helping her with her trunk, she caught sight of two beautiful people, a man and a woman, both with regal features and striking blond hair. He held his arm out to his mother, and despite her knowledge of his revolting, evil father, Ginny felt a moment of compassion for the lost-looking Narcissa Malfoy, clinging to her son's arm as though she might float away at any moment. She wondered what kind of life the poor woman had led, to be so confused without her husband by her side.

Her gaze shifting past the blond pair, Ginny saw her own mother, in stark contrast to Draco's mother, standing without Mr. Weasley and looking perfectly content. Fred and George were with her as well, and waved, calling out to her.

Draco and his mother, followed closely by Crabbe, Goyle, and their own fathers, had taken no more than a few steps toward the barrier when he saw the Weasley twins grinning and smiling broadly. "Ginny!" one of them yelled.

Unable to stop himself, Draco's head swiveled around, looking to where they were waving. Their eyes met immediately, and he knew she'd been watching him. Her eyes pulled away from his as a bright grin split wide across her face, and he moved his gaze to Crabbe and Goyle, as though he'd been making sure they followed.

"Fred! George! Mum!" she called in response, abandoning her trunk to run toward her family.

The platform was crowded, and as she ducked through the crowd of students and families searching for one another, Ginny made sure that she wove her way next to Draco. As she jogged past him, her arm caught his side rather violently, and she fake-tripped so that he reached out to steady her. Draco knew that it was as much reaction as it was wanting to touch her again as he caught her arm so she wouldn't fall. Ginevra was far too comfortable with her own body to trip and fall like that, so he was fairly certain that she, too, was longing for final contact. Their gaze met steadily for one moment, each absorbing the memory of the other's face to carry with them.

Almost as quickly as he had grabbed her, Draco let go, sneering, "Watch where you're going, you oaf."

Lifting her head haughtily, Ginny met his cold eyes with fire in her own, tossing him a crude gesture and striding off without a word. Draco thrust his arm out to the side, where he knew it would meet Goyle's stony figure as he stepped forward to intimidate the girl. "Leave it," he commanded coolly. "There is too much to be done at the Manor."

"She did that on purpose," Narcissa murmured to her son, once they had set off again. "You've been with her, haven't you?" Draco cursed inside, but managed to keep the wince off his face. His mother had spent her entire adult life watching women come and go in her husband's company, and she could observe better than anyone the telltale signs of recent passion.

"Of course, Mother. I'd heard the little Gryffindor princess was giving it up right and left. How could I not have a go?" he replied smugly, wondering if he could keep this up for another entire summer. "It was just the once, to see if I could," he added hastily, lest she get the wrong idea.

"Her father works for the Ministry, doesn't he?" she inquired softly. "Perhaps we could use this indecent encounter of hers to pressure him into working toward your father's release." Her eyes met her son's, and Draco wanted to choke his father for the desperate, crazed look on her face at the thought of her husband being returned.

"I doubt it, Mother," he responded, sick to his stomach at the thought of using Ginevra that way. "He works in the Muggle Artifacts Department, hardly well-placed to influence criminal hearings."

She looked disappointed, so he quickly added, "But perhaps Father will enjoy hearing of such things. It may brighten his days for a time. Regardless, _we_ will begin working for his release as soon as we get back to the Manor."

Narcissa Malfoy seemed content with this possibility, and continued on in silence.

As Lucius Malfoy had done for all but the previous of the past four Junes, Draco led his mother and their cache of followers to a dingy set of stairs and began their descent into the abandoned London Underground station. It had not been in use since the St. Pancras Underground station had been erected just across the street from King's Cross decades earlier, but even so, Draco suspected that the staircase leading to an even drearier hallway was magically hidden from Muggle eyes. They had never seen so much as a single person down here, apart from Mr. Morbigun, the shady wizard who ran the probably-illegal Floo stop, and a few other wealthy wizarding families comfortable with legal ambiguities. The families Crabbe and Goyle traditionally also used this station, though mainly because the younger Crabbe and Goyle were already bringing Draco's trunk.

As they passed into the hallway holding the massive, crumbling old furnace which Morbigun had connected to the Floo network, Draco saw a small crowd of waiting families. Blaise Zabini and his well-widowed mother stood in a similar fashion to Draco and his own mother, Zabini's latest step-father having recently passed away. He also recognized the Greengrass family, two lovely daughters, Astoria and Daphne, he thought, and their parents.

Upon seeing his most favorite (and feared) customers, less one Mr. Malfoy, Morbigun shooed away Theodore Nott and his father, the sight of whom filled Draco with rage. He was one of those lucky ones who had participated in the seige on the Ministry of Magic without being captured and sentenced to Azkaban. Why a sniveling worm like Nott should be free with his family, while Draco's own father, a great and powerful wizard in the Dark Lord's forces was locked up, was a mystery.

Draco took Mr. Morbigun's favoritism for his own group to mean that, even though his father was not present, the name of Malfoy still garnered the usual mix of respect and fear. This was the first time in his life that he had been called upon to act as head of the Malfoy family, and rather than being nervous, Draco realized suddenly why his father had insisted upon his being a leader in the Slytherin house. He knew precisely where this man stood in relation to himself and his family, and he knew that not only would Mr. Morbigun show all respect due to the Malfoy family, but that if he failed to do so, all Draco had to do was not put his arm out to stop Goyle from correcting the man.

"Ah, young, Mr. Malfoy," Mr. Morbigun wheezed, bowing respectfully. It had always struck Draco as rather odd the way the man seemed to gasp between every few words, as though each breath did not give him air as it should. "I was so, dreadfully sorry, to hear, about the elder, Mr. Malfoy. Such an, unfortunate, turn of events."

"Yes," Draco replied noncommittally, returning the bow with a slight tilt of his head, all the respect this man required. He still didn't have all the information on the battle that had occurred in the Department of Mysteries, so to make too strong a comment in any direction might prove unwise. "We are still looking into how he was captured. We believe he may have been lured into the Ministry by other parties and was caught in the cross-fire when Aurors stormed the building." He narrowed his eyes at the elder Nott, making it plainly clear to the cowering man that if he needed to, he would throw him under the Knight Bus to free his father, "We will begin investigating at once."

"Yes, naturally," Mr. Morbigun replied, bowing again. "Such unfortunate, events," he repeated. "Ah, now, shall we return, you and the lovely, Mrs. Malfoy, to Malfoy Manor?"

"Indeed," Draco agreed, once again tilting his head to the older man. He took in the people around him more carefully, already plotting in his mind. From the left sleeve of Mr. Greengrass's shirtsleeve poked a spot of reddened skin, and what Draco was certain was the black, curling body of a snake. A new recruit then, and he already knew that Mrs. Zabini's hard-earned fortunes had more often than not been used to fund the Dark ways and Pureblood interests, though he had no real authority over her. Nott himself had been in the Department of Mysteries, and both Theodore and Blaise were set, along with Draco himself, to take the Dark Mark immediately after finishing at Hogwarts. It was decided, then. "The Crabbe, Goyles, Notts and Greengrasses, as well. We will all be travelling together," he added, halting Morbigun in his step with a surprised gasp.

"All of you?" he repeated, looking around at the gathering of wizards and witches. The families he had mentioned all turned to him in surprise at having been suddenly and unceremoniously summoned, though he knew that the youngers Crabbe and Goyle had the same steady, slightly stupid stare they always did, willing to do his bidding.

"Was I not clear?" Draco spoke as much to those gaping at him as he did to Morbigun. He smirked proudly, knowing that all of these people would return with he and his mother to Malfoy Manor. Regardless of their other obligations, their first was, and would always be, to the will of the Dark Lord. Mrs. Zabini and her son looked intrigued at the notion of a spontaneous meeting with the Malfoy heir, and followed Mr. Morbigun as he led them all to the furnace.

"I'm afraid," he wheezed, and he really did look afraid, Draco was pleased to see, "that not all, of the travelers, will fit, together."

"Very well. My mother shall accompany the Crabbes and Greengrasses. I shall follow with the Goyles and Notts. And Mrs. Zabini, if you and your son may join, we would be most honored by your presence." He knew he was laying it on a bit thick, but this being his first foray into leading a group of Death Eaters in anything, he wanted to make sure and gain as many allies as possible.

"Of course, Mr. Malfoy," Mrs. Zabini replied smoothly, taking his mother's place on his arm as Narcissa stood in the furnace beside the Greengrasses, who all kept an eye on the massive Crabbe men who were clearly there to keep them in line.

Draco had no concern that the Greengrass family might try to run or fight, but it was always a good idea to make sure they knew what would happen if they tried. At Hogwarts, Crabbe and Goyle were always with him as a sort of wordless threat, though an unfulfillable one, given the intolerance for fighting and dueling at the wretched school. Here, in the real world outside school, with the black shadow of the Dark Lord's return still fresh upon everyone, there was a very real possibility of violence and death. He had opted to keep the Notts with himself, as he saw them as more likely to cause trouble, and wouldn't dream of putting his mother, who was ill-equipped to cope with a misplaced hairbrush, in such a situation of potential danger.

The furnace whooshed green as Mr. Crabbe calmly stated, "Malfoy Manor," and within moments, Draco and the others stood in their place.

"You know," Mrs. Zabini said, gazing up at Draco as Mr. Morbigun spread the Floo powder around their feet, "I've always been a bit frightened of travelling by Floo."

It was an absurd thing to say, as the wizarding world was almost entirely connected by Floo, and Draco saw it for exactly the flirtatious invitation it was. Taking the opportunity to show a fellow Slytherin that he was not restrained to only his own generation, he smoothly replied, "That's quite all right, Lady Zabini." He took her under his arm and grasped her hands in one of his. "Hold tight to me, we'll be there soon."

"Such a charming young man," the Black Widow cooed, as Draco called for his home manor and they disappeared in a torrent of green flames.

Mr. Morbigun stood in the empty hallway, hand clasped tightly around a drawstring bag the younger Mr. Malfoy had given him. It would have been unbearably rude to count it before sending them off, but when he opened it, Morbigun found nearly double his usual rate, which he understood to mean that he oughtn't speak of the strange departure for his own good.

~%%~

Draco spun through the green flames, seeing one fireplace after another whoosh past. He had learned long ago that the trick to avoiding Floo sickness was not to focus too hard on anything. He concentrated instead on the warmth of Mrs. Zabini under his arm, and within seconds, they had come to a halt at his home.

Draco had not been home the previous summer, and realized this fact only as he stepped out of the fireplace to discover that the Grand Hall had fallen into a state shockingly close to disrepair. Chandeliers hung crooked, and one side of the largest drooped from the center of the ballroom. He realized that several strands of crystals had been destroyed, along with a window pane just opposite the room. Nothing was glaringly obvious as having caused this, though there was the matter of the black throne.

Facing the fireplace stood a massive onyx throne, carved with serpents, on a dais of the same stone, towering above Draco's head as he stared up at it in what he hoped wasn't too obvious astonishment. Even empty, the height and build of the throne was intimidating and sent a knowing chill down his spine, for their were few who could get away with doing such damage to the finery of Malfoy Manor.

Draco had not been home the previous summer, and as such did not know that the Dark Lord had been in residence for nearly seven months, reigning terror over his mother and father, and that this was why he had been sent to Africa in the first place. He did not know that fear of the Dark Lord's return was what had thrown his mother into such a state at her husband's arrest. He did not know that the Dark Lord had left unexpectedly, to seek knowledge elsewhere, or that he had left no estimate for his return. Indeed, until he had sent word through the inner circle that there was a prophecy in the Ministry of Magic that he required, his followers had heard nothing from him in months.

His mother stood expectantly with the Crabbes and Greengrasses, watching him carefully. He understood her look perfectly, her eyes quietly insisting, _Later_.

~%%~

Draco could not help his frustration as he fell into bed two days later. After two nights in a row of meetings with all free Death Eaters who could be tracked down, they had come up with absolutely nothing.

The first night back from Hogwarts, he had sat in his father's usual place at the long triangular table in the Grand Hall. It was designed to make all but one occupant feel inferior, by narrowing down the length so that there was only one head of the table. His father sat at this side, while a dozen or more lesser Death Eaters were seated down the length of each of the other two sides, positioned at an angle so that they had no choice but to look up the table to their leader. It was a brilliant piece of furniture, Draco had to admit, and he had felt superbly powerful standing at the head of the table, glaring down at all those free men who had failed his father.

Of course, his Auntie Bellatrix and many more powerful witches and wizards had been imprisoned alongside his father. Their forces were sadly depleted at present, leaving him with hardly any brain power among the ranks to work toward his father's freedom. Nevertheless, he would not fail.

He had, at the very least, gained the full story of events at the Ministry of Magic, and was now aware of the prophecy that the Dark Lord had desired. It was impressed upon him that, having failed to lead his troops to victory, Lucius Malfoy and his entire family now sat in a dangerous place in the Dark Lord's tenuous graces. Draco understood that he would have to be a particularly devoted servant to the Dark Lord in order to make up for what he most surely saw as a blunder on the part of Lucius Malfoy.

Burying his face in his pillow, Draco's mind fled, as it had done repeatedly over the past two days, to the warm memories of Ginevra. He wanted to send her a letter, but there hadn't been a spare moment, between meeting with the Death Eaters and tending to his mother, until this evening. And while he desperately felt a need for companionship outside of his manor - an urge that had never before struck him, he was disturbed to realize - he had been too concerned with freeing his father to be preoccupied with something so juvenile as swapping letters with his crush.

His crush? What a distressing slip of the mind. He pondered the word for a minute, considering it's implication. Draco had never had a crush on anyone. He had dated Pansy since beginning school, only from a sense of duty and to give the right impression to his peers. He'd been with more than his share of the girls of Hogwarts, but not because he'd had any inclination toward any of them.

Almost any of them.

Ginevra had always held a particular interest for him. She was a deep well of contradictions, and there was always something new to discover. She was a Pureblooded girl, proud of her heritage, yet fiercely defensive of the rights of the impure. She was willing to sacrifice for her family and friends, but he rarely saw her take anything in kind. Though she showed a strong face to the world, Draco suspected she held something much softer inside that no one was allowed to touch. She was a powerful force in the ways of Dark magicks - Draco himself had been on the receiving end of more than one of her hexes and jinxes - but she still believed staunchly in the prosecution of Dark wizards and witches, and was so firmly entrenched in the light side, it was a wonder she spoke to him at all.

And there was the biggest contradiction of all: the Gryffindor princess, falling into the dangerous, forbidden embrace of himself, the son of one of the most prominent members of the Dark Lord's inner circle, arguably reckoned as royalty himself in more than one circle of Dark magic.

He knew full well all the reasons he ought to stay far, far away from Ginevra Weasley. And yet, whenever he sought to get rid of her, any time in the past he had thought about ending their contact forever, something had stopped him. All the way back to his second year at Hogwarts, he had looked for a reason to write to her, he could see that now. At the time, he had told himself it was out of a sense of respect for her bold actions on the train, but that was rubbish, and a part of him had to have known it, even then. Nothing his father had taught him gave him reason to respect the enemy, to deign to waste a drop of ink in communicating unnecessarily. Even if he had had valid reasons to write in the first place, their continued correspondence, the teasing letters, and all the personal conversations they'd had in those letters, there was no reason for any of that. Perhaps he could have said he was collecting information, but what good was such information when he did not pass it on to his father, who surely might have made some use of it in the passing years?

Was this a crush, then?

Rushing to his desk, eager to share his newfound revelation, Draco's hand moved quickly, until he realized what he was penning, and paused his quill, rereading the words he had put to parchment.

_Ginevra,_

_I have the strangest, most exciting news. I haven't been able to take my mind off you since we said goodbye. Your eyes keep floating in front of me. No matter what I see, there they are. It's as if the memory of you is haunting me in everything I do. I can't be sure, because it's never happened to me before, but I do believe I fancy you. I don't understand why or what kind of spell you've laid on me, I just can't help_

Looking down at his mess of a confession, Draco was repulsed by himself, for his sloppy writing as much as for the soppy sentiment it expressed. What did he really intend to say in post? He could hardly confess his feelings on paper, where someone else might read them. Besides, there was something too cowardly for his taste about telling her he fancied her in a letter. Though he'd never been a part of the absurd courting rituals of children, he had certainly seen enough of it happen-with mounting disgust for his peers-that he knew to do so was the action of some shy little first year. He might as well say, _check yes or no._

His fevered thoughts cooled momentarily, Draco scoffed at what would surely have been a disastrous decision. The first draft landed neatly in the bin. After a moment's hesitation, Draco retrieved the crumpled parchment and smoothed it out, placing it in the bottom drawer of his desk. For some unknown reason, even an unsent letter to Ginevra seemed sacrilege to throw away.

He sighed, submitting himself to the truth.

A crush, then.

~%%~

Narcissa Malfoy was a bundle of fragile nerves, jumping at the slightest sound and keeping to herself far more than Draco thought could be healthy. She was a frail woman to begin with, but it seemed that playing hostess to the whims of the Dark Lord, coupled with the loss of her husband, had sent her into an absolute state.

Draco's knowledge in how to comfort a woman in distress was limited, at best, and moreover generally not of a vein he was inclined to try with his own mother. As with most personal problems in the Malfoy family, the only sure way to lift his mother's spirits was to throw Galleons at the situation.

On the Monday after Draco's return to Hogwarts, he led his mother up to his father's study. It was exactly as Draco remembered from his childhood, and even as he held his mother's arm in a firm grip, he felt a residual fear that his father might catch him in his private quarters. He knew this was ridiculous, as Lucius Malfoy was still locked away in Azkaban with no immediate hope of escape. Moreover, Narcissa Malfoy looked on the verge of a panic attack any time she so much as passed the entrance to the Grand Hall, where the Floo network had deposited them only days before. Draco knew that the fireplace in his father's study was also connected to the Floo network, and so he had decided that they would use this forbidden room on their outing.

"Where are we going, darling?" his mother asked, looking up at him. It occurred to Draco that this was the first time in his life his mother had done so, himself having apparently grown quite a bit in the nearly two years since last they'd met.

"I'm taking you somewhere to cheer you up," he replied, smiling winningly. "Do you trust me, Mother?" He offered her his arm formally, bowing slightly as he did so.

Narcissa beamed at her little boy, all grown up, and took the arm of the remarkable young man before her. Indeed, Lady Zabini had been praising his particular remarkability only the night before over dinner, much to his doting mother's chagrin. "Of course I do, darling."

"Then let's get you back in the style of living to which you are accustomed, hmm?"

~%%~

Fiske Alley was a bright spectacle of colors and sounds early on a Monday morning. They exited one of the many ornate fireplaces that lined one end of the high street, known as Dabicle's Destinations, a high-class Floo station. Pressing five gold Galleons into the palm of Mr. Dabicle himself and nodding politely at their wealthy acquaintances, the truncated Malfoy family stepped forward into Fiske Alley.

It wasn't all that different from Diagon Alley, in its layout, though Draco had spent time here long before stepping onto the dirty cobblestones that led to Ollivander's for his first wand. This was a place where the wealthy came to find trinkets, furnishings, and general finery of a quality that could not found elsewhere in wizardkind. Many of the shops specialized in handmade and custom-designed pieces, such as a small, nameless shop just off the high street known only as the glassblower's, where Draco planned to take his mother to have the damaged chandeliers in the Grand Hall replaced. There was also a branch of Madam Malkin's in Fiske Alley, though one would be hard-pressed to find there anything so plain as Hogwarts school robes.

Baubles and Beauties, a women's finery shop, was still just as Draco remembered it, wafting heavily scented air into the street as they walked past. It primarily sold cosmetics and perfumes, but Draco remembered a small jewelry counter toward the back. It was certainly not as fine as Brilliantine, the sparkling shop further up the street, from which Lucius Malfoy had purchased the emerald pendant hanging around his mother's neck, but they sold a respectable quality of jewels nevertheless.

One of Draco's favorite shops had always been The Wicker Throne, a furniture shop that sold no wicker whatsoever that he had ever seen. In the years before Draco's memory, the shop was called The Wicked Throne, an homage to The Dark Lord, and a front for several illegal operations. In those days, it had been run by a Death Eater who was imprisoned after The Dark Lord's first reign. It was now owned by a little old witch. She had changed the name to remove the shop's dark origins, but nearly everything else had remained the same. It was filled with showpieces, and the walls were lined with everything from foxskin to dragon hide, and buttery doe leather to tapestried brocade, materials from which any piece could be made to order.

The Malfoys strolled merrily up the high street, making a much-needed public appearance of solidarity, and cordially greeting family friends. As they passed by each shop front, Draco was reminded strongly of his childhood, when he would parade with his parents, pleased to be seen in the midst of such finery.

At one point, however, a young woman with fire-colored hair passed him, and though he knew in a glance it was not Ginevra, he found himself sick at the thought of her seeing him in such opulence. It went against every instinct he had as a Malfoy and as a member of the upper classes to be ashamed of his wealth. But there were so many things standing between himself and Ginevra, and their disparate family standings was just one more hurdle that he knew could never be overcome.

They reached the end of the high street, chatted amiably with Pansy Parkinson's mother - Draco was endlessly relieved that she did not have her daughter in tow, or he would have been obligated to escort all three women - and made their way back down, verbally ripping apart the unfortunate-looking woman, from whom Pansy had clearly gotten her looks.

After their obligatory stroll to ensure that they were seen by all the right people - he had been sure to toss a roguish wink at one of the young ladies who wrote for The Daily Prophet's social page - Draco led his mother into _Baubles and Beauties_, where he had seen her gaze linger on their first trip past. The scent that came out of the door was cloying and too sweet for Draco's tastes, but he followed her in anyway, until she made to remove her arm from his.

"You don't need to come in, dear," she said, in response to his motion of protest. "I only want to look at perfumes for a moment, you won't enjoy that."

"No, Mother, it's quite alright." Seeing her about to refuse him a second time, he added, "I thought I might find something nice for Pansy. Perhaps you would be so kind as to help? I hardly have a woman's taste."

Upon entering the spacious shop, Draco discovered that he was the only man on the premises, apart from one wizard in a set of blindingly gold dress robes. He had to blink firmly and look away to prevent his vision from being affected by the light display coming from the other man's finery, and dropped his attentions to the displays arranged artfully on delicate tables of silver filigree and glass.

Small items that might please a woman, such as gilded mirrors, enchanted to compliment the owner's appearance and a Curl-Up-And-Dye Comb, charmed to curl and color the user's hair, were arranged very carefully among swaths of rich silk fabric drapings and liberal amounts of shimmering faerie dust. Petite goblets of green glass and black diamonds caught Draco's eye, while his mother carefully examined the facets of a deep blue sapphire the size of his fist, which, according to its placard, had the power to cure wrinkles when placed beneath one's pillow for seventy-seven nights. Draco rolled his eyes at the thought of sleeping atop a rock for the sake of one's beauty, and thought it for the best that he had not been born a witch. He was vain, indeed, in his own way, though it would never lead him to purchase - he stopped to peer at a purple glass decanter with a jewel-studded stopper - "Mermaid Oil, distilled from the Hide of Merchildren in the finest process known to Wizardkind. One drop in each eye, morning and night, to enhance eye color and shine. 20 G. per drop."

"Outrageous," he muttered to himself.

"What was that, darling?" Narcissa asked, glancing back at her son from a swollen canvas flask of Air of Superiority.

"Nothing, Mother," he replied quickly, taking his place once again at her arm.

Their meandering path led them into a section of ladies', well, garments, Draco supposed was the word. Hats, from small and simply composed all the way to a horrifying monstrosity with what appeared to be a whole stuffed swan perched jauntily atop a very wide canvas summer hat, adorned one large table. Gloves of all lengths and colors were on a second. Hundreds upon hundreds of decorative buttons filled what Draco would have called a barrel were it not made of such intricately carved oak. He shifted idly through the buttons, coming across one that was precisely the shade of Ginevra's hair, and another that shimmered in the light and held just a few of the colors of her deep hazel eyes. Trying to hide his growing boredom, Draco turned to peruse the table of gloves.

A pair of white lace opera gloves caught his attention. He reached out to touch them, and discovered that the fabric was much smoother than it appeared, not at all rough as he would have expected lace to be. The pattern was delicate, leaving small holes the size of a knut where bare skin would show through. Draco could not help but think how these gloves would emphasize Ginevra's slender arms and elegant fingers, her creamy moonlight-colored skin peeping through the gaps in the lace. These were gloves meant to be displayed, worn with a hand-tailored gown of the finest fabrics and accented with a dazzling display of jewels. How he would love to see Ginevra dressed as a Pureblooded woman ought to be. He knew she would be a vision to behold. Not that she wasn't perfectly lovely in anything - or better yet, nothing, he thought, smirking to himself - but there was something about a woman, dressed up to be shown off by the man on her arm. Of course, buying her expensive dresses and jewelry was completely out of the question, but he supposed a small little trinket wouldn't hurt. He had promised to buy her new undergarments, after all.

"Do you suppose she might like a perfume?" his mother suggested

Fearing for a moment that she had become omniscient in the two years since he had last seen her, Draco's head swiveled violently toward his mother, eyes widened, to see her gesturing to a counter where a young witch stood, offering samples of perfumes. Agog, he struggled to form words for a moment before she turned back to face him, whereupon he closed his mouth with a snap.

"Pansy?" she prodded gently, unnoticing of her son's panicked reaction. "Do you suppose she might like a perfume?"

Relief washed over Draco so quickly he thought his legs might give out. "Ah," he replied, somewhat lacking his usual debonair attitude. He quickly recovered. "Yes, I suppose she might. What do young ladies wear, anyway? I haven't the faintest."

Deftly relaying control of the situation to his mother's better instincts and tastes, Draco retired back into himself, heart still racing too fast to be comfortable in the warm shop as she stepped forward to gain the girl's attention. He was impressed that the shopgirl knew his mother's name, and pleased that, despite his father's imprisonment and his own lengthy separation from his family, the Malfoy name did not appear to have been tarnished.

After several minutes of half-listening to the excited conversation between his mother and the shopgirl about what perfume his girlfriend might like, and having been caught in the spray of what smelled like dragon piss but was in fact an outrageously expensive women's fragrance, Draco found his senses overwhelmed. Glancing out the window into the relative sanity of Fiske Alley's shining shopfronts, his eye caught on a black and purple sign just across the street. "Mother," he said quietly, "will you forgive me if I step outside a moment? I'm afraid I've found myself a bit of a headache."

"Of course not, darling," she replied, just as quietly. "Would you like to meet at the Gilded Orange for tea?"

"Delightful. Half an hour?"

"Wonderful, darling." She reached a hand up to cup his face, and Draco felt a sense of maternal affection he had nearly forgotten existed. "Take care of yourself, yes?"

"Yes, Mother."

Stepping into the street, Draco inhaled a cleansing lungful of the scents of rich mahogany and leather, jewelry polish, and the faintest aroma of smoke and steam from the glass-blower's shop up the way. Turning away from the smells of his childhood, however, he moved toward the sign that had captured his attention.

A large black sign with deep purple shapes and gilt lettering proclaimed, Parthenope's.

The sign sat over a relatively small shop, but if Draco's memory of Greek mythology - and the shopfront displays - were anything to go by, this was a place he wanted to be. He oughtn't, and he knew he oughtn't, but in the very front window was a display of vivid Slytherin green, and he simply had to have it for Ginevra.

He did not look around to see if he were noticed; he did not duck his head as he entered. He simply strode through the door and into the shop bravely, knowing in his heart that a Malfoy was not ashamed to be seen going anywhere. He was greeted by what he could have sworn was a faint laughing, though it quickly vanished. He looked around, and beheld a lovely creature standing before him, leaning on a wooden post.

Her skin was smooth as butter, and the rich hue of maple. Her clothing was simple, a dress made of some deep green material with an oddly organic look to it. She was barefoot, he noticed, and as she stepped forward, brushing leaves from her eyes, he realized that the post was, in fact, a slender tree growing straight up into the shop. Looking beyond her, Draco was caught in the deep blue eyes of another exquisite young woman, standing beneath the flow of a waterfall, though neither her pale blue dress nor her white hair appeared to be wet.

"Ah," he said, swallowing, as he began to suspect the nature of the shop girls.

The first nymph stepped toward him, speaking in a voice that held the gentle rustle of leaves in the wind and a lilting tone as of a reed flute, "I am Parthenope, these are my ladies, Arethusa," she gestured to the woman in the water, "and Anna Perenna," she gestured to another woman, who had appeared behind her, just as lovely as the other two. They held a fascination that he associated with a nearby veela, but he could tell just by looking that they were not.

"Are you looking for someone special?" Arethusa asked from her place under the waterfall. Her voice was more musical than Parthenope's, he noticed, carrying the notes of moving water.

The three women were so distracting that Draco only now looked around the shop for the first time. Racks lined the wall, and he could see from where he was that they were filled with scant bits of indecency. But he needed something simpler. Only a few small tables filled the floor space not taken up by the errant elements of nature, and it was on these that Draco knew he would find his prize.

"Yes, indeed," he murmured, Ginevra's slight body replacing any other in his mind as he mentally filed through the options. "Someone special indeed."

He moved slowly between the tables. He found the object that had drawn him in in the first place, and held it aloft draped over one finger. He spoke to the three woman as a group, "Would you happen to have this in a matching set?"

Parthenope and Anna Perenna exchanged a small, sly smile that he did not let go unnoticed. "I believe we do have it," Anna Perenna said, her voice catching in his ear like a lover's whisper.

"In the back," Parthenope said.

"Come with us."

~%%~

Precisely one half of one hour after he had last seen his mother, Draco entered the Gilded Orange with a spring in his step, a parcel under one arm, and a scented handkerchief stuffed into his left pocket.

As he stepped into the Gilded Orange, a dignified but popular tearoom, Draco inhaled deeply of the soul-calming scent of tea leaves and black currant scones. His mother stood off to one side, looking once again a bit lost without someone to take her arm. He stepped forward to do so immediately, and as soon as the gentleman in charge of the front room saw him, he stepped forward to lead them to a table.

"The back room, please," Draco said calmly, knowing his mother preferred to take tea in the quieter area.

"Of course, Mr. Malfoy," the man said, nodding smartly.

They were brought to a small table for two, and as was nearly everything else in Fiske Alley, it was a shining display of polished silver and spotless glass. Set meticulously upon the table was a formal tea service in pure white porcelain with an exquisite inlay pattern of roses in emerald green and silver brushing. Draco waved away the server's hand when he attempted to pull out Narcissa's chair, doing it for her himself and offering his hand as she sat gracefully.

"Will you be joining us for tea, this afternoon, Mr. Malfoy, or would you prefer the menu?"

Draco paused for a moment as he sat, remembering what he had heard his father order in the past. "We shall have the high tea," he said firmly. "But bring us a bottle of your sweetest champagne, and an onion tart for my mother, if you would."

"Certainly, Mr. Malfoy."

The bright beam on his mother's face at hearing her favorite dishes ordered for her was worth the entire trip, in Draco's opinion. "Oh, my Draco," she sighed. "What a wonderful man you've grown into. Your father is so proud of you. We both are," she added, as though only just remembering that she, too, had an opinion.

"When Father is freed," Draco said, lowering his voice conspiratorially, though no one else was seated in their room, "the name of Malfoy shall be mightier than ever."

"Indeed," she agreed, eyes sparkling. "And your sons shall make it mightier still."

It was an old adage in the Pureblood community, a politeness that was often reserved for very formal events. Draco had heard his father speak the words mockingly to the men of lower-classed Pureblood families. It struck him that he had probably said those words to Ginevra's father at some point in their history together, though he smirked slightly to himself to realize that perhaps it would be Arthur Weasley's daughter who would be the mightiest. Certainly the most formidable opponent he himself had ever come across, both in and out of bed - broom cupboard and train compartment, to be precise. But the sentiment held.

He knew the words came from his mother out a sense of ritual and habit, but he suspected that maternal love was also behind the words, longing for family and love as much as the continued lineage of the House of Malfoy.

Their tea arrived in swift time, their first cups poured for them and the champagne theatrically opened with a sword and left in a bin of ice beside the table. The tea stand was placed between them, filled with fresh pastries, preserves, butters, and finger sandwiches, while a steaming tart smelling of rich, sweet onions was place before his mother.

Tucking his napkin into his lap, Draco gently took a tartlet filled with strawberry and whipped cream off the stand and took a bite, placing the rest on his plate. He wasn't particularly hungry himself, but he knew his mother would wait for him to take a first bite before beginning her own meal, as she always had for his father.

After delicately swallowing her first bite of onion tart, his mother said, "I bought a perfume for Pansy, I do hope that's alright."

"I'm sure it'll be lovely, whatever you chose," he agreed amicably.

"It's called _Joie de Vivre_," Narcissa continued, eager to share her accomplishment. "The girl in the shop said it is very popular with young ladies, but not many people buy it, so she shan't be copied by too many other girls, I hope. If you'd prefer something else, she said you can bring Pansy into the shop and they'll create a fragrance only for her." She smirked slightly at this suggestion, and they shared a look that plainly expressed neither of them thought Pansy was worth that much effort, nor would her questionable merits be improved by a new perfume.

They sat in companionable silence for several minutes, before Draco finally said, "I thought we might do something about the damage in the Grand Hall, while we're out today." He tried to sound as casual as possible, but Narcissa still stopped mid-sip, her champagne flute held immobile between table and mouth. He knew she tried hard not to think about what or who had been in the Grand Hall to cause such damage, and suspected quite strongly that she'd just as soon pretend the room itself was nonexistent. "A new chandelier or two," he continued calmly, as though she had not reacted to his words, "perhaps a tapestry for the north wall, some drapes. Maybe even a new mantle for the fireplace. Nothing too extravagant; just a bite of a sprucing up." He reached for his own champagne, taking a long draw as he waited for her to respond. When she remained wordless, he added, "I thought it might be a nice project for you over the summer, something to occupy your days. I'll be busy working on Father's release, I expect."

This was a bluff, as he hadn't the faintest clue as to how to have his father released, not when he had been found red-handed in the Department of Mysteries, surrounded by the shattered remains of thousands of priceless prophecies, if his sources were to be believed. Yet he needed for her to have some purpose to her days, or how could he hope to safely leave her alone for the next whole school year?

"What do you think, Mother?" he asked, his tone slightly sharper than he would have liked.

"If you think it's best, dear," she replied diplomatically. It was a response he had heard her use with his father hundreds of times in his life, and while he appreciated being treated with the same respect as his father by others, it made Draco ill to think that his mother was as frightened of him as she so clearly was of the elder Malfoy.

He recovered as quickly as he could manage, suggesting, "We should at least go to the Owl Post, see if there are any postings for a cook and a maid. With the House Elf gone, it's wrong that you should take care of the estate on your own. It's not right that a woman of your station be preparing her own food, either. We'll get you situated back into life as it ought to be, Mother."

Draco longed to promise his mother that he would protect her from life becoming so difficult again, but he found the words stuck in his mouth. He could not promise her that things would not fall apart again anymore than he could promise to keep the Dark Lord out of his childhood home. With a war on the horizon, and danger looming around every corner for the family of an imprisoned Death Eater, there were very few promises he found he could honestly make to her.

So what could he possibly offer Ginevra?

~%%~

When Ginny returned to the Burrow, life fell easily into the same pattern that had always guided her days. She awoke in time for breakfast before her father went to work, then spent her mornings cleaning house and helping her mother with laundry and gardening. After tea, she often had a few hours to play Quidditch in the field with Ron and whichever of their brothers happened to be about, before she was called in to help her mother prepare dinner. Members of the Order were often coming and going at all hours of the day, and she spent many evenings dangling over the bannister with Ron to eavesdrop on the secret meetings with Extendable Ears.

But no matter how ordinary her days were, as she lay in bed, her thoughts returned to the same boy, night after night. She would whisper his name into the dark, remembering his parting words, _a man who would keep you, if he only could_. During the day, it was easy enough to distract herself from thinking of him, from wondering what would happen when they returned to school in the fall. But at night, he invaded her thoughts, fantasies, and dreams. Her hands found her body, trying vainly to recreate his touch, to find once more those overwhelming sensations they had shared. She counted down the days until the first of September on a handwritten calendar she kept hidden in her school trunk, still only weeks into the summer holiday.

But that was before the day of the de-gnoming.

Ginny was out in the garden with her mother, hurling gnomes as far as they could manage, and taking it in turns to fume at the boys, who as a whole had been nowhere to be found when the chore needed to be done.

"Really, this is no job for the pair of us!" her mother was grunting as she struggled to wrench a gnome from the ground by its ankle. "Making their own mother do something so undignified, when Merlin knows I've got enough to worry about with the whole Order coming over tonight, without the gnomes running about my feet in the garden and ruining the potatoes! And you, too, Ginny. This isn't a job for an old woman and a little girl!"

_Ginny is a name for a little girl. Ginevra is a woman's name._

"You're not old, mum," Ginny grunted, though her mind was caught on a memory.

"Well, I'm too old to be doing _this_!" With an unseemly grunt of exertion, her mother flung the last gnome over the far garden wall. Her aim was too low, however, and the ugly potato-shaped head of the gnome bounced off the top of the wall with a wooden-sounding _thunk _as it went over. "Oh, the poor thing," Mrs. Wesley said regretfully.

"Mum, it's a _gnome_." Ginny wiped her hands on her trouser legs, preparing to go inside and start dinner. Looking down at her hands, she realized perhaps a shower would be in order first.

"But it's still a living creature," her mother argued, her maternal instinct winning over all else, as was so often the case.

"Yes, and so is a _pixie_, but that doesn't mean we keep them as pets! Argh!" Ginny clutched her knee in pain where one rogue gnome had snuck up and kicked her. With a vicious growl, she snatched the squirming bastard by the neck and hoisted it into the air.

"You finish up with that one, dear, and I'll fetch us some iced pumpkin juice." Mrs. Weasley bustled off into the Burrow while Ginny swung the gnome maniacally round her head.

She let the gnome go flying with a final swing so forceful that she nearly took herself off her feet. As she watched the little bugger sail cleanly over the garden wall, she was quite pleased to see it struggle to its feet, only to topple back over again. Beyond the wall, however, she saw the unmistakable sight of an owl approaching. Fear clutched her heart, as had become the habit at the sight of an unexpected owl. A midday owl almost surely meant a sign of trouble. Already since she'd been back from break, two owls had come from members of the Order to spread the word of Death Eater attacks. They were growing more and more violent and less and less obscured to Muggle eyes. Ginny had overheard Professor Lupin telling her parents in hushed tones that it was only a matter of time before You-Know-Who's forces would be strong enough to make direct attacks on the Muggle world, or even the Ministry of Magic.

Ginny tried to calm her beating heart, telling herself that it was, perhaps, a letter from Harry to Ron. Logic quickly quashed that notion, as the owl was close enough for her to realize that it was nothing like the pure-white feathers of Harry's owl, Hedwig. It had a massive wingspan, and for a brief moment, she wondered if Draco had sent her an owl. But no, she realized quickly that it lacked the grace of his beautiful eagle owl, and trepidation once again became the word of the day.

Rather than zooming through the open kitchen window, as most owls did, the owl swooped down toward Ginny, who shrieked and ducked to avoid the bird. When she peeked up again from her crouched position, she found the bird perched calmly on the tomato trellis, its leg held out to her. The letter was rolled and tied with a single black ribbon of some sort of shiny fabric. She pulled the letter from its holster, and tugged at the ribbon, stuffing it in her pocket as the bird flapped off. A gasp escaped her mouth with only the first word, which said everything about the sender.

_Ginevra,_

Malfoy. Draco. He'd sent her a letter! This wasn't new for them, of course, given their correspondence of years past. But this was the first contact they'd ever had outside of school. Ginny had to force to mind to calm down so that she could make out the words on the parchment in her hands.

_Ginevra,_

_I hope the owl found you without trouble. He's an old family owl, mostly just brings us the Prophet anymore, but he's a faithful sort of bird. I told him to make sure you only got this package when you were alone, and I'm sure you'll see why._

Package?

Looking around to the trellis the bird had perched upon, Ginny found a brown paper package sitting where the bird had been, about the size of a loaf of bread. When she picked it up, she found it was soft to the touch, and much lighter than it appeared, given its size. Her mind quickly raced back to his words on the train.

_And my knickers, too?_

_I'll buy you new ones._

He hadn't. Had he?

_Crack! Crack!_

"Mum! Dad! Ickle Ronnie-kins!"

Ginny's eyes widened at the sound of her twin brothers approaching the Burrow. Of all the times to pop round for a cuppa. "Oh, bugger," she muttered, wondering how she would escape them seeing the package Draco had sent her. It was far too big to fit into her pocket, and the twins were fast approaching. Thinking quickly, she grabbed the jacket she had discarded while de-gnoming and draped it over her arm, with the package tucked primly underneath.

"Hullo, darling sister!" Fred called jovially, ruffling her hair as he went by.

"How's summer holiday treating you?" George asked.

"Lovely," she groused. "We've just finished de-gnoming."

"Yes, I saw the little blighters wandering about in the field," George replied.

"D'you know what's terrible about summer holiday?" Fred asked suddenly.

"De-gnoming the garden with mum while my useless brothers are all out galavanting?"

"No, baby sister!" George grinned widely. "It's the end of holiday, when _you_ still have to go back to school!"

"And we were not galavanting, I'll have you know," Fred added, in a very Percy-like stern tone of voice.

"We weren't," George agreed, sounding nearly offended. "We've just signed the deed to the new home of-"

"Weasley's Wizard Wheezes!" they proclaimed together.

"And we've come 'round to celebrate with the family!" Fred finished.

"Well, Mum will be thrilled to bits, I'm sure," Ginny replied sarcastically. "But congratulations, you two, really. Dad's not home from work yet, but Mum's in the kitchen getting tea ready for us. I'm sure she'll make sandwiches for two more. I don't know where Ron is. Avoiding chores. The Order are coming over tonight for some big, important, secret meeting that none of us is allowed to go to."

The twins rolled their eyes as one, and George winked at his sister, saying, "See you on the third floor landing, then?"

"Of course," she replied, shifting her parcel tighter to her body.

"Oh, it is good to see you, little sister," Fred said in a sudden bout of sentimentality. He gave her a one-armed hug that threatened to jostle the brown paper package free of her grip. The package was saved from falling, oddly enough, by George's own hug. She sighed in relief as she felt it pressed closer into her grasp. Wriggling two fingers into the seam, she secured it under her jacket.

"Yeah," George agreed. "Without us here, someone's got to keep Mum on her toes! Well, see you inside, Ginny. We'll go tell Mum we're here."

Ginny let out a massive breath, and suddenly found herself cursing Malfoy and his bloody stupid idea. He knew how large her family was, how could he be so stupid as to think she could receive a package without anyone knowing? Struggling to keep hold of the parcel and the concealing jacket, she bolted for the kitchen door, slowing to a walk as she reached eyeshot of the window where her mother was doubtlessly fussing over the tea set. She tried to pass through the kitchen unnoticed, taking advantage of Fred and George's arrival, but her mother had too many children to be so easily distracted.

"Ginny dear, tea's on!" she called, with an arm around each of her twin sons. "And Fred and George have come around with news!"

"I know, Mum, I talked to them already," Ginny said, somewhat more peevishly than she'd intended. At her mother's concerned look, she quickly added, "Sorry Mum. That last gnome really got me. I'm going to shower first, then I'll come down for tea, alright?"

She already had one foot on the stairs when her mother concurred, and as she raced up the stairs, she shouted over her shoulder, "Save me a sandwich!"

Once safely tucked into her room, Ginny slid the package into her trunk, where all her private possessions were held, inside her pewter trunk, between layers of woolen winter socks and spare underwear. She then snuck out to the hall to make sure no one was around, and unfolded the letter, smoothing it gently across her bedspread.

_Ginevra,_

_I hope the owl found you without trouble. He's an old family owl, mostly just brings us the Prophet anymore, but he's a faithful sort of bird. I told him to make sure you only got this package when you were alone, and I'm sure you'll see why._

_Your cotton knickers are just precious, but you're a lovely woman, Ginevra, and you should dress yourself as one. I doubted you'd owned anything like these before, so I've sent an assortment. Try them on when you're alone, wear each set and walk around for a few minutes in nothing else. When you write back, tell me which ones you like the best._

_Personally, I imagine the white lace will suit your complexion best, letting your fair skin peek out amongst the patterns of stars. Though I am to understand that lace can be a bit uncomfortable for daily wear. Much better to wear when you plan on taking it off. On the other hand, the softness of the silk will be just like your skin, and that fabric feels so cool beneath the fingers, you can just imagine it's my hands, instead. The red and black may be a bit too much color for your skin tone, but do let me know if you like the Oriental patterns. Cranes and cherry blossoms are hardly a point of arousal for me, but one must respect the classics._

_Of course, I'm sure you'll guess which are my favorites. Satin is a lovely fabric. Nothing like undergarments that literally slide off the body. The material is nearly the same shade as the sheets I have at school, and I must admit, that did fuel my decision somewhat. The silver clasps and buckles were a custom addition, but I think it adds that flair of class, don't you? Sleep in my colors, Ginevra, and dream of me._

_Draco_

She read the letter a dozen times over, memorizing every word, every stroke of the quill. Her fingers ran against the parchment delicately, knowing that he had held this in his hands, perhaps only this morning. _Dream of me_. If she hadn't been already dreaming of him almost every night, she certainly would be now. She wondered for the eight thousandth time that summer, if he thought of her ever. The answer to that seemed to be a hearty yes.

Remembering the package suddenly, Ginny folded the letter up gently, and traded it for the package in her cauldron. But before she could so much as pop the seams on the wrapping, her mother's voice floated up to her, "Be quick about the bath, Ginny! I'm going to need help with dinner tonight!"

With a small groan of frustration, Ginny tucked the package under the letter in her hiding spot, and went to wash up before tea. She would just have to open it in the evening, after the Order had all left. That gave her hours and hours to think about the lovely things Draco had picked out just for her.

It was going to be a very long night.

~%%~

**A/N**: By far my quickest update in years, and isn't that just a little bit sad? My life seems to be levelling out a wee bit, so writing for my own enjoyment is once again an option. To my new readers, please make sure to add a story alert for this piece, or an author alert to also receive updates on One Kiss From You, the companion piece to Brother to Dragons.

Thanks to all my reviewers from the last chapter, and to everyone who didn't review but still sat patiently waiting for the update email!

Rock on, keep reading, and as always, review!

cj596


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